Peter Austin

Born in 1942,I was brought up in Dorset and studied painting at Bournemouth College of Art. During 1962 to 1964, following the award of a Travelling Scholarship, I lived and painted in southern Sweden where I was also able to exhibit my work. 

In 1966 I began a forty year career in art education,teaching at a senior level , inspecting art in schools  and  examining  GCSE and A Level art. In 2006 I made the decision to return to full-time painting. 

Having grown up on the Dorset coast,my early works were responses to familiar and much-loved places such as Portland and the Purbecks. Although these places are sometimes returned to for source material,much of my more recent work has been made in response to a wider range of subject matter,often prompted by memories and recollections of times,places and experiences.

In addition to this widening of subject matter I have shifted towards work that now shows a greater concern for the problems associated with making a painting that will exist in its own right,as a thing in itself,as a piece of music might do,whilst still being a response to a visual and personal experience,something derived from the looking and feeling that precedes the making without being illustration.