London Paint Club

Peter Blake

New Work

1 December - 18 December 2020

Peter Blake Late Period. 'Girl with a Disney Tatoo' 1, 2020, oil on wooden panel, 9.6 x 6.7 cm, 12 x 8.5 cm (framed) © The Artist, Images Courtesy of Waddington Custot - NEW WORK: Peter Blake runs online at Waddington Custot from 1–18 December 2020. waddingtoncustot.com

Waddington Custot is pleased to present NEW WORK: Peter Blake, the fourth iteration of the gallery’s digital exhibition series.

The NEW WORK initiative was launched online earlier this year to premiere and showcase painting and sculpture by significant contemporary artists.

NEW WORK features a collection of figurative portraits in miniature; lockdown measures implemented in London this year created the space for Blake to return to these paintings in oil, which he began five years ago. Blake, fascinated since childhood by miniaturisation and an avid collector of toys, tiny curios and quirky objects, dares himself to paint these intricate, precise works as small as he can. Each painting features a portrait of an imaginary woman, close-cropped to the frame and confronting the viewer directly with an intense gaze. Overlaid images of Disney characters as ‘tattoos’ on the women, which Blake recalls have been ‘mischievously’ incorporated into the paintings, add a playful, dreamy quality to the works, which appear at once real and surreal. These motifs, like the component parts of the faces themselves, are found emblems, taken from Blake’s vast bank of collected images.

Peter Blake, Late Period. 'Girl with a Disney Tattoo' 4, 2020, oil on wooden panel. 9.6 x 6.7 cm, 12 x 8.5 cm © The Artist, Images Courtesy of Waddington Custot - NEW WORK: Peter Blake runs online at Waddington Custot from 1–18 December 2020. waddingtoncustot.com
Peter Blake Late Period. ‘Girl with a Disney Tattoo’ 3, 2020, oil on wooden panel, 9.6 x 6.7 cm, 12 x 8.5 cm, © The Artist, Image Courtesy of Waddington Custot - NEW WORK: Peter Blake runs online at Waddington Custot from 1–18 December 2020. waddingtoncustot.com

Biography

Sir Peter Blake (b. 1932, Dartford, Kent) is a British painter, sculptor, draughtsman and printmaker. He is known as one of the leading figures of British Pop art. Peter Blake studied at Gravesend School of Art before being accepted into the Royal College of Art, London, where he studied alongside other key British Pop artists, David Hockney, R.B. Kitaj, Joe Tilson, Allen Jones, Peter Phillips and Derek Boshier.

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