Northwest Figurative Artists' Alliance

Northwest Figurative Artists' Alliance

an organization of realist and figurative artists from the pacific northwest

Peter Malarkey

Painting landscapes has helped me become aware of the varieties of optical experience, and has helped me learn to use them. My aim is to provide the viewer the experience of watching or being at that location, rather than offering a likeness of the place's features. Painting weather is a great way of doing this.
I think all landscapes contain a pervasive human element which we identify or create as soon as we take it in. This is a function of our outward activity and of our internal perceptual makeup. Seeking this has meant painting narratives whose stories or lessons may be more felt than prescribed.

In painting, I try to select from various specifics of a locale, selecting the information which determines the rate and variety of seeing, and which evokes that environment's presence for all of the senses. Rather than duplicate the scene, I try to duplicate the act of gazing at it, and of being in that place.

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ABOUT
The Northwest Figurative Artists’ Alliance was an organization of artists from the Pacific Northwest that formed in the early 1990s as an advocacy and educational group devoted to figuration and realism in the visual arts.
MEMBERSHIP
The Northwest Figurative Artists' Alliance is no longer active, and is not accepting memberships.
CONTACT
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Northwest Figurative Artists' Alliance