PETER DRAKE

ARTIST STATEMENT

Whether painting landscapes, miniature toys or depictions of suburbia, I believe all pictures have various levels of meaning.

I am most interested in finding the serene, the whimsical and the uncanny in the space between the real and the unreal. I like to think of my paintings as Giotto meets Vermeer on the way to David Lynch's house.

The painting techniques that I employ are largely 17th and 18th century indirect techniques, but with acrylic paint. I can do thousands of glazes a day which gives the work a unique luminosity and as a result becomes jewel like.

Peter Drake’s work is held in private, corporate and public collections including the Whitney Museum of Art, Phoenix Museum of Art, MOCA LA, Weatherspoon Art Museum, L.A. County Museum, Microsoft, Kirkland and Ellis and the Progressive Collection among others. 

He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Award, a New York Foundation Fellowship and is a two-time recipient of the Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy Program Grant. His work has been written about in the New York Times, Art in America, Newsday, Huffington Post, Art & Antiques and numerous other publications.

Drake's “Waiting for Toydot”, a MTA Arts & Design permanent public art commission for the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) Massapequa Station opened to the public in 2015. “Waiting for Toydot” features 18 art glass windows and 5 ceramic/glass mosaics installed throughout the train station and is seen by over 6,000 commuters daily.

He actively curates, lectures, and is the Provost at the New York Academy of Art, a progressive figurative and representational graduate art school in New York City.

Drake maintains an active studio practice in Dumbo, Brooklyn, has had 28 solo exhibitions and is represented by Linda Warren Projects, Chicago / Los Angeles, Healy Contemporaneo, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas.

Peter Drake was born and raised in Garden City, Long Island and lives in Manhattan.