Peter Corr — Landscape Painter

I am a British landscape painter based in Ely, Cambridgeshire. My work is made primarily in oil and cold wax medium, and it draws on the landscapes I know most intimately — the Fenlands of Cambridgeshire, the forests of East Anglia, and the places I have lived and worked in over many years, including Germany, Cyprus, and the Middle East.

Practice and Approach

My paintings are built through a process of layering, scraping, and reworking — each layer responding to and modifying what lies beneath. The surface that results carries the history of its own making: traces of earlier marks, shifts in colour and tone, and the physical evidence of the tools used. I work with palette knives, brayers, and other unconventional tools, as well as brushes, and the variety of marks this produces is central to the character of the work.

The subjects I return to most often — the forest, the fenland, the quality of light at particular moments — are not chosen for their picturesque qualities but for the particular challenges they present to the painter. The Fenlands, in particular, resist easy description: their flatness, their exposure, and their strange combination of the agricultural and the elemental make them a demanding and rewarding subject.

Background

Although from the UK, I have spent many years living and working abroad, and all of these places have inevitably influenced my development as an artist. In any discussion of seeing and perception, we know that what we see with our eyes is only a fragment of the entire story. We do not merely see what is directly in front of us; we see in relation to ourselves, our past, and our experiences. This understanding is central to my practice.