Artist Peter Boggs Explores the Ins and Outs

“Peter Boggs, the New Zealand-born, Blue Mountains-based artist, has been a regular exhibitor in Canberra for the past 22 years. Boggs champions a form of ‘slow art’, where he relies on the viewer to pause in front of his work, to become absorbed by its inner logic that has been created through severe geometry and finely observed subdued oil colour glazes and to enter into a contemplative trance,” Sasha Grishin writes for The Canberra Times.

“Nothing much happens in his landscapes or domestic interiors – they are completely depopulated – yet the situations created are begging for interpretation and an interpretation on a human level,” Grishin writes. “There is a sense of mystery and of the uncanny created in his small finely worked canvases as if alluding to allegories for which we are provided few clues. Compared with his previous exhibitions, there is a greater sense of anxiety in this body of work, something that is difficult to articulate when you are faced with images of apparent distilled outer serenity concealing an inner world of turmoil.

“In his compositions, the artist has become increasingly ambitious in exploring the space beyond the frame. He is fascinated with the view through the window or the open doorway where we assume life is continuing beyond that which is seen within the picture space.”

Original article by Sasha Grishin, The Canberra Times, June 8, 2020.