Peter Bell is a Wellington-based abstract painter. Peter completed his Master's degree in Fine Arts (Painting) at Elam, Auckland University. He has travelled extensively throughout Europe, Asia, America and Australia visiting galleries and experiencing different cultures which influence his artworks. In 2010, Peter returned from teaching IB art in Hong Kong to New Zealand. He currently teaches art whilst pursuing his own practice as a painter.
Peter draws inspiration from a multitude of artists often taking simple shapes and reductive forms to explore in a formalist manner. His March 2022 solo exhibition titled “This way, that way” explored geometric shapes inspired by the positive/negative fan shape triangles from Pacific tapa designs. This ‘motif’ is then interrogated using different colour combinations, scale shifts, repetition, overlapping, transparency and distortion as new shapes which merge together to create rhythms and patterns. He plays with spatial layout and subtle shape repetition to create clean and aesthetically pleasing works. His paintings are beautifully vibrant and reminiscent of silk screen prints with their flat colour and clean edges in a palette of primary or neutral colours. Peter uses acrylic paint on handmade watercolour paper ranging from A5 through to A1 in size.
