Graham Peacock
Ochre Raj, 1996
50 x 100 x 5 inches
Acrylic on canvas
Collection of the artist

Peacock is a British artist born in London, England in 1945. He has worked in Edmonton, Canada since 1969 where he is a Professor of Fine Arts (Painting) at the University of Alberta's Department of Art & Design. He has exhibited extensively in Europe and North America in solo exhibitions and with the New New Painting Group.

Peacock views his art as having a natural reference. His work is not directly taken from an observation of nature but rather reflects the inherent drawing contained in his painting process. The work has a "topography" and sometimes the shapes have associations with natural forms. Concepts of painting are intuitively applied by Peacock in the search for new ways of painting with contemporary plastics, glitter and florescents, as well as the more traditional acrylic pigments of painting. Peacock states that his painting process, which he considers to be an extension of the approach to painting of Jackson Pollock and particularly New York artist, Lawrence Poons, is "a natural process of paint reheology used to derive forms of positive value and aesthetic quality. By this I attempt to derive an original statement which reflects the positive characteristics of the human condition."

Peacock makes his paintings by composing layers upon layers of acrylic color laid on canvas placed horizontally on the floor. The layers, when dried, reveal color through color to produce 'crazing'. These dried formations are then cut, shaped and undulated and then mounted on a plywood stretcher, and may be collaged and edited to produce a resolution of the pictorial image. This process takes several months and in some cases works are developed over a year or more.