Marc Peters
Thinking of ‘city landscapes’ you will find a landscape of a unique kind. Compared to landscapes of outside areas as forests or pastures, they may seem static – but they are not. In the ‘city-scapes’ Marc Peters shows us, buildings move and flow as we move among them and streets stretch in different directions as we walk through them.
Marc Peters shows us the ever-changing sites of sunlit streets, rooftops, fireescapes and housing blocks as living surroundings. The concrete, brick and steel as organic as we are, its citizens. Facades that change as the light and season changes. Deconstructing in lines and empty spaces to be constructed anew in different shapes, buildings and grits for us to recognize and meet again as the places we know and love.
Marc Peters (1954) lives and works in Utrecht, The Netherlands, where he studied graphic art and design. His paintings, drawings and lino-cuts are, unique as they are in their own kind and method, unmistakably of his hand. To describe his work, words like rhythm, color and playfulness come to mind. It’s the magic of city life we see, uplifting and exciting. To define this magic is to recognize the presence of its habitués, the people who were born and raised there. In the streets, shops and restaurants.
Looking at his work, his lino-cuts in particular, you feel the hustle and bustle of street life, hear the traffic and feel the nervous dynamics of movement. It is a world we know from memories, a world that might not even exist, but one that we dream of and long for. It’s all in the feeling of being there, feeling part of and experiencing its beauty.
Marc Peters’ paintings seem of a softer, more contemplative kind. And yet also in these works the light is a constant factor, providing a décor for subjective view and experience. The sunlight, sometimes dreamy but often nervous, chases us, colors the surroundings in yellows and violets and throws long shadows. They present us with a view in which we, for a moment, find ourselves isolated from our busy lives, dreaming and remembering.
