28th May - 25th June 2022

Fisherton Mill is delighted to welcome back Peter J E Matthews whose last exhibition at the Mill was in 2018. Peter returns with a collection of work inspired by a 2020 extended trip to Singapore, New Zealand and Australia, cut short by the Covid lockdown with Peter taking the last Quantas flight out of Sydney. He then embarked throughout various Covid restrictions on creating paintings of time, memory and desire.

They were inspired by the sights and glimpsed views of elements from these three exotic and diverse countries. Paintings are all an artifice and Peter likes to use 2 or 3 canvasses as in a diptych or triptych to represent a moment of time, as in his work 'The Garden Party', a reinterpretation of a garden found in Hamilton, New Zealand, recreated from Katherine Mansfield's beautiful and tragic short story describing a hot summer memory of a 1905 Edwardian Garden Party.

Whilst many of Peter's paintings are quiet and enigmatic muses on empty rooms or tiled floors, which are intentionally theatrical and portray where time has paused, others are more intense and explosive, reflecting on environmental catastrophes such as the huge tragic fires around The Bush, the Blue Mountains and the Cities of Sydney and Canberra, the aftermath of which was witnessed by Peter on his travels. Peter is currently working on 'Fire' an oil painting so new it will still be wet in it's frame for the exhibition in May. It is an irony that in his last solo show at Fisherton Mill, a large painting of a giant glacier in Alaska was featured. This melting wall of ice was cracking, screeching and tumbling noisily into sea in the face of global warming.

Peter qualified with a Degree in Fine Art from Bristol and an MFA in Painting from the University of Reading. After graduating he lectured in Fine Art at many colleges across England. Peter has exhibited widely, this is his nineteenth solo exhibition. He has work in public and private collections across the country and abroad. Peter now lives and works in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

Meet the Artist - Come and meet Peter in the exhibition space on Saturday 28 May
from 10.30am - 3.30pm

You can find out more about Peter and see examples of his work here.

Admission free. Opening hours: Monday-Friday, 10am-5pm; Saturday, 9.30am-5.30pm