From the Collection: Peter Barron

For today’s collection spotlight we asked AGP Curator Fynn Leitch to reflect on Peter Barron’s, “Alewife and Crow Feather,” from the AGP Permanent Collection:

Earlier this week we shared a video featuring Peterborough-based artist Peter Barron talking about the importance of cultural institutions as places of community building, healing, and resilience.

Barron is a painter and a printmaker who has been living and making work in Peterborough since 1975. This is a piece by Peter: a study in oil of a fish carcass and a feather. We’ve got a few pieces by Barron in our collection but this is the one that hangs most prominently in my memory.

The past is a thing we can recall through interactions with its evidence – photographs, written accounts, ephemera – but it’s also something conjured through the accidental echoes of our involuntarily indexed sensuous experiences. How often has a scent, a flavour, or a sound tripped you into a recollection? This painting is, for me, a conjurer of imagination. Barron, I think, has told me that he painted this (and others like it) in his studio, studying the stuff around him, translating their colours and reflections. Lots of fish – again – I think that’s what I heard. It is evidence of Barron’s being and looking; of his time well spent.

The time an artist spends in their studio – just making – is art; is important; is valuable. Bruce Nauman declared this with Bouncing Two Balls Between the Floor and Ceiling with Changing Rhythms (1967-8), Kelly Mark with In & Out (1997 – ongoing until 2032).

Where are the places that bring you calm?
Where do you go to process the world around you?
Where do you like to just be?