As a longtime musician, music has been crucial to my creativity. Recently, my focus shifted to painting, and over the past five years, I've deeply engaged in ambient music. What started as an alternative outlet has grown in importance. I've found many parallels between creating ambient music and painting, despite using different materials: paint and sound. 'A Slow Revolution' (Detail) This October, I will present my forest paintings with DNG Contemporary Art at the Affordable

An artist’s reflection on how rhythm, interval, and attention connect ambient music and forest painting—translating sound into structure, colour, and space

The transformative power of oil & Cold Wax medium

Peter Corr providing a guide to a joint exhibition of artwork with his daughter Louisa Corr at The Old Fire Engine House in Ely

The textural qualities of cold wax encourage extensive mark-making and the exploration of surface irregularities. Beeswax, as a natural material, inherently reflects elements of nature and the processes of change and transformation.

In November 2024 I showed a new body of work at Manchester Central, exhibited through the Darryl Nantais Gallery at Linton 59. The paintings continued my ongoing engagement with woodland and forest — large-scale works in oil and cold wax that explore structure, light, and the threshold quality of the natural world.

In October 2024 I gave a presentation and live painting demonstration to the Isle of Ely Art Society. The event was held at the Methodist Church, Chapel Street, Ely, and focused on my working process with oil and cold wax medium. 'The First Temple' 130 x 100 x 4 cm on canvas The Demonstration The session centred on the layered approach that characterises my practice — the use of brayers, palette knives, and unconventional tools to build up and rework the painted surface. Cold

The Cheltenham Fresh Art Fair brought together a broad range of contemporary painters, with several artists demonstrating their practice live. This post reflects on the exhibitors and the work on show — a useful record of where contemporary British painting currently stands.

Using cold wax medium with oil paint to create a forest

The question I am asked most often is how oil paint and cold wax work together. This post draws on my current studio practice to describe the relationship between the two materials — how they interact, how I mix and apply them, and what the medium makes possible that oil alone does not.

This large-scale painting was developed over an extended period in the studio, its surface built up through successive layers of oil and cold wax medium. The title refers both to the colour — a deep, saturated green that dominates the composition — and to the sense of enclosure that the vertical forms of the trees create: a vault of branches and foliage that shelters and contains. Surface and Process The work was made using a variety of tools — palette knives, rollers, and pr

I returned to the Edinburgh Art Fair in November 2023, showing a selection of forest paintings with Linton 59. Edinburgh is always a serious context for contemporary work — the audience is engaged and the standard of exhibiting galleries is high.

Artists are often asked this question — it is typically the first and frequently the last. The conventional answer is that the hours spent directly on the painting might add up to a few days, weeks, or perhaps a month or two. The artist would then wisely note that, in reality, the piece in question represents the accumulated knowledge and experience of a lifetime. Both answers are true, and neither is complete. Painting of a Forest by Peter Corr 'The Lie of The Land' The Infl

For over fifty years I have been painting — in different countries, across different phases of life, and through a succession of approaches that have each left their mark on the work I make now. Looking back across that span of time, what strikes me most is not the continuity of style but the continuity of preoccupation: a persistent interest in landscape, in the qualities of light and surface, and in the tension between what is seen and what is felt. Celebrating Nature's Ele

In June and July 2023 I held a solo exhibition of paintings in Linton, Cambridgeshire. The show brought together a selection of recent work in oil and cold wax, spanning a range of scales and exploring the recurring themes of my practice: the forest, the fenland, the quality of northern light, and the tension between representation and abstraction. The Work The paintings in this exhibition were developed through the layered process that characterises my approach to oil and co

In May 2023 I gave a presentation at the Royal Photographic Society Contemporary SIG conference, held over a weekend at Foxton, Cambridgeshire. The theme of the event centred on the vulnerability of the Fenland area — its exposure to rising sea levels, the pressures on its flood infrastructure, and the broader implications of climate change for a landscape that sits, in large part, below sea level. Fens Photography by Peter Corr A Landscape Below Sea Level With a third of the

Painting in front of an audience is a different kind of exposure. At Fresh Art Fair I demonstrated my approach to oil and cold wax — the layering, the resistance of the surface, the decisions made in real time. It is a useful discipline: the work has to speak without explanation.

For centuries, the death of painting has been proclaimed. Since the invention of printing during the Han dynasty, artists have anxiously watched each new technological advancement. When the printing press emerged, artists had valid concerns, but they eventually leveraged mechanical reproduction to replicate their work and reach a broader audience. With photography's arrival, it became clear that the representation of reality could be handed over to an optical device capable o

How to be creative with oil paint and cold wax. Using Jeff Becks guitar playing for inspiration

Every painter knows the experience of stalled momentum — the studio that feels resistant, the canvas that offers nothing back. This post reflects on what that state actually is, and on the particular discipline of returning to work not when inspiration arrives, but before it does.