About
“Peter Solow has what is in effect a private repertory company of human figures. Writ large on canvas in an unmistakable handwriting, they move in and out of high definition. Sometimes they are so sharply characterized that we feel ourselves engaged in their doings and curious as to their outcomes. But sometimes they look like members of a large group who have forfeited their individuality in response to a collective urge to run, to walk, to look and to wait.
Human destiny is Mr. Solow’s subject, whether it is treated as Ingmar Bergman treats it (in terms of private involvement, that is to say) or in terms of huge predicament that has not yet defined itself. Either way, and whether on a seashore or in an unnamed metropolis, Mr. Solow holds our attention.”
John Russell -The New York Times
Biographical Information
Born:
New York City 1952
Education:
1971-1972 Boston University
1972-1976 CooperUnion, New York, New York
Bachelor of Fine Arts. Cooper Union 1976
1999-2001 Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont
Master of Arts in Education. Goddard College 2001
Public Collections:
National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York
Newark Museum of Art, Newark, New Jersey
Dallas Museum of Art,Dallas, Texas
Samuel P. Harn Museum, Gainesville, Florida
The Artistic Journey of Peter Solow
Born in 1952 in New York City, Peter Solow was raised in Manlius, New York a suburb of Syracuse . Solow graduated Cooper Union with a BFA and went on to receive his Masters in Art Education from Goddard College.
At Cooper he studied with Dore Ashton, Nick Marsicano, Stephen Posen, John Walker, Wolf Kahn, Paul Resika, Jack Whitten, Sue Gussow, Andrew Forge, James Brooks and Rueben Kadish. For Solow this experience, which opened a door to the world of art and a constellation of ideas and questions, providing him a foundation for his rich and textured approach to making art. It continues to act as a catalyst for his work.
After graduation, Solow spent his formative years living in New York City working at odd jobs, making art, and working to put the lessons learned at Cooper into practice. Building not only on this art making experience but also on the city itself he continued to discover his predilections and passions, deepening his understandings about art, and solidifying his ideas about artist process. His years in New York were transformative. While in New York he began to exhibit his work both in the city and United States
In 1990, he moved to Sag Harbor, New York on the east end of Long Island where he still resides.
A seminal event in Solow’s artistic and personal life was a visit to Italy in 1984. It was truly a transformative experience, especially his time in Florence and his first encounter with both the city and Italian Renaissance and pre Renaissance painting. Since that first visit he has returned numerous times including an extended stay with his family in 1992.
Mr. Solow is best known for his oil paintings and drawings. More recently while not abandoning these traditional mediums, he has experimented with mixed media composites integrating painting, drawing, photography and digital technology. His subjects range from the streets and interiors of New York, to the landscape of central New York State and the East End of Long Island and the piazzas and landscapes of Italy. Irrespective of the subject and medium what unifies his work is its continued dialog with and about process and his particular very personal approach to drawing which is essential to his work.
While Mr. Solow draws inspiration from a variety of sources Giacometti, Manet, Cassatt, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Matisse and Mondrian his work is also connected to the American Experience, including in visual art of Hopper, Homer, Franz Kline, Stieglitz, Dorothea Lang, Bernice Abbott, Francesca Woodman, the music Copland and Armstrong and the poetry of Walt Whitman.
He has had an extensive teaching career both in the visual arts and academic subjects including in the International Baccalaureate program, and is the former coordinator of The Donald Reutershan Education Trust created in support of Visual Arts and Architecture Education.
