Peter Roux
Peter Roux (b. 1965, USA)
Peter Roux is an artist and painter who has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions all over the United States and in Australia. Roux was born into a military family in 1965. His father was a Marine officer, so he spent his early childhood moving around the US. After his father retired, they settled in the Boston area, where Roux lived as a teenager until he moved to Asheville in 2017.
Roux studied Painting at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston, where he earned his BFA and MFA. It was in school where he became aware of his strong connection to the horizon line and from there, the exploration of landscapes and the natural world.
The universality of his subjects; clouds, land, and water, is one of the many aspects he is drawn to with this type of work, knowing that there is an entry point for all types of viewers. Roux sees his paintings as windows and is interested in the way we as humans see, in contrast to what we view more often than nature: film, photographs, social media, and computer screens. The abstract marks that are part of the otherwise realistic composition, such as a thick stroke of orange next to meticulously painted clouds, breaks the sense of illusion for the viewer, reminding us of the physical presence of the surface as a plane with paint applied.
Roux works on multiple pieces at a time and rarely works in silence, preferring music while painting, and podcasts while stretching canvas or prepping panels. While Roux is a true painter, he delves into the monotype making process as well as sculptural paintings. The risk taking involved with the making of a monotype thrills the artist. He is also interested in the painterly quality as well as the unique marks and surfaces that can be created only with this type of process.
The paintings on cubes opens up many new opportunities for the artist as well as for the viewer. One can walk around the painting, look at it from top to bottom, and question how each plane and cube is connected or contrasted. For the artist it made him more conscious of his relationship to the piece. Although they are three-dimensional, he still considers them paintings, because overall he is interested in creating images on planes.
My work is driven by the natural world and how we experience it. I see my work as pictures about juxtaposition- of things to other things, of images to experience, of us to the world we occupy.
I typically use landscape as an entry point- sky, water, place. I'm drawn to these spaces, but I'm also drawn to how we experience them daily...particularly through the language of the hundreds of predetermined images we encounter moment to moment. These intakes help inform how we see the world around us. It's what we see, and how we see it.
All images of places and things have undergone editing to control narrative and viewer experience. It's a seemingly endless well of choices- scale, size, edges, duration, etc. I'm interested in exploring these in my work. It feels like language to me, conveying meaning and drawing a response.
In recent years this exploration has taken some of my work off the flat 2-dimensional plane and into deeper space, with the work's structure pushing into columns and cubes. If image are windows, I'm looking at the window's shape in addition to the scale- tall verticals, narrowed widths.
All images are substances on surfaces, creating illusion, standing in. This push/pull of illusory space against other types of marks- perhaps flatter and more abstract in nature- is a back and forth dialogue that speaks about the beautiful artifice of image as much as anything else.
Additionally, while my very dire concerns about our treatment of the environment are not the primary driving force in my work, I can't ignore them. They seep in. Perhaps as metaphor, perhaps directly.
In the end, art is a voice from a point in time, about our consciousness in that time. This is mine.
Education
1989 B.F.A. Massachusetts College of Art and Design
1993 M.F.A. Massachusetts College of Art and Design
Selected Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions
2024 Gallery at The Umstead, Cary, North Carolina
2023 Tyger Tyger Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina
2023 Alan Avery Art Company, Atlanta, Georgia
2022 Miller White Fine Art, Dennis, Massachusetts
2020 Van Rensburg Gallery, Milton, Australia
2019 Gallery Orange, New Orleans, Louisiana
2018 Upstairs Artspace, Tryon, North Carolina
2017 Lyons Weir Gallery, New York, New York
2017 Mike Wright Gallery, Denver, Colorado
2015 Van Ward Gallery, Ogunquit, Maine
2015 Candita Clayton Gallery, Providence, Rhode Island
2014 Gallery at The Umstead, Cary, North Carolina
2013 Fetherston Gallery, Seattle, Washington
2013 Bryant Street Gallery, Palo Alto, California
2013 Work installation Neiman Marcus Boston, Massachusetts
2012 Van Ward Gallery, Ogunquit, Maine
2012 Fetherston Gallery, Seattle, Washington
2009 Van Ward Gallery, Andover, Massachusetts
2009 Pawtucket Arts Collaborative Invitational Show Rhode Island
2009 Jules Place, Boston, Massachusetts
2007 Jules Place, Boston, Massachusetts
2006 G2 Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona
2006 Melanee Cooper Gallery, Chicago, Illinois
2005 Sasaki Associates, Watertown, Massachusetts
2005 Van Ward Gallery, Ogunquit, Maine
2005 Jules Place, Boston, Massachusetts
2005 G2 Gallery, Scottsdale, Arizona
2004 Tapestry Gallery, Sun Valley, Idaho
2003 Ballard-Fetherston Gallery, Seattle, Washington
2003 Jules Place, Boston, Massachusetts
2002 Trinity Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
2002 Ballard-Fetherston Gallery, Seattle, Washington
2001 Raymond Lawrence Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
2001 Ballard-Fetherston Gallery, Seattle, Washington
2000 Etherington Fine Art, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 TAG at Congdon Yards, High Point, North Carolina
2025 Bender Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina
2024 Studio Shop Gallery, Burlingame, California
2024 Tyger Tyger Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina
2023 MA Doran Gallery, Tulsa, Oklahoma
2023 Van Ward Gallery, Ogunquit, Maine
2021 MA Doran Gallery, Tulsa, Oklahoma
2019 Asheville Area Arts Council, Asheville, North Carolina
2018 Mark Bettis Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina
2018 Miller White Fine Arts, South Dennis, Massachusetts
2018 Wally Workman Gallery, Austin, Texas
2017 Mike Wright Gallery, Denver, Colorado
2017 Blue Spiral 1 Gallery, Asheville, North Carolina
2016 Lyons Wier Gallery, New York, New York
2016 Van Ward Gallery, Ogunquit, Maine
2016 Alan Avery Art Company, Atlanta, Georgia
2016 Sargent Gallery, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
2012 Reynolds Fine Art, New Haven, Connecticut
2012 Karan Ruhlen Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico
2012 Edgewater Gallery, Middlebury, Vermont
2010 Fetherston Gallery, Seattle, Washington
2010 Eisenhauer Gallery, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
2009 Etherington Fine Art, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts
2009 Fetherston Gallery, Seattle, Washington
2008 Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art, Sarasota, Florida
2008 Jules Place, Boston, Massachusetts
2008 Renee George Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina
2007 Etherington Fine Art, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
2007 Anne Loucks Gallery, Glencoe, Illinois
2006 Etherington Fine Art, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
2006 Hayes George Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina
2005 Anne Loucks Gallery, Glencoe, Illinois
2005 Cheryl Hazan Gallery, New York, New York
2004 Tapestry Gallery, Sun Valley, Idaho
2004 Etherington Fine Art, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
2003 Trinity Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
2003 Etherington Fine Art, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
2003 Van Ward Gallery, Ogunquit, Maine
2003 Gallery Terrence Denley, Birmingham, Alabama
2002 Trinity Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
2002 Scott White Contemporary Art, La Jolla, California
2002 Mike Price Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
2002 Etherington Fine Art, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
2002 Van Ward Gallery, Ogunquit, Maine
2002 Gallery Terrence Denley, Birmingham, Alabama
2001 Etherington Fine Art, Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts
2000 Loaning Artists of The DeCordova Museum Federal Reserve Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
2000 Mike Price Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
Selected Corporate Collections
Publications
2000 New American Paintings No. 20
2002 New American Paintings No. 38
Studio Visit Magazine, A juried competition in print
published by Open Studios Press
Artist Residency
2013 BAER Art Center, Hofsos, Iceland