Piece description from the artist
The work Landscape with Drain embodies and is influenced by a tradition of San Francisco Bay Area artists such as Wayne Theibaud and Richard Diebenkorn in interpreting the California landscape as an abstraction. Like these two artists, Peter Ivanoff rejects traditional perspective opting for flat aerial views and shifting horizon lines. The artist prefers to work from his imagination and memory to effectively merge fiction and reality.
In Landscape with Drain Ivanoff up-dates the contemporary California landscape to reveal a denuded scene made up of multiple up-ended, tilted and receding planes. Empty roads or paths seem to invite the viewer into deep space not un-like a de Chirico from his metaphysical period- and like a de Chirico there is a certain haunting quality to the work. In Ivanoff’s work the application of paint is direct and flat. There is however much life in the brushwork and drama in the surreal presence of a large drain in the foreground.
Plagued with wildfires and drought, the situation in California is clearly on the artist mind. Perhaps to transcend this situation the artist offers references to water in the work, with luminous ultramarine blues and violets as well as evidence of new life in a muted patch of green in the distance.
Peter Ivanoff spent most of his professional life, initially as an art director in advertising, then as a concept artist and designer
for advertising and marketing. In addition to making a living as a commercial artist,
throughout his career he has maintained a studio practice.
As a architecture student he was introduced to painting by the artist Gilbert Steed, (a color consultant for Bocour paints and a student of Hans Hoffman). He studied and was introduced to European Modernism by the photographer and painter, John Guttman, (a student of Otto Mueller) at SFSU. He also studied Life Drawing and Anatomy at the Art Student's League.
He earned his B.A. from SSU and an M.F.A from MICA (a highlight of which was his association with the late Salvatore Scarpitta). Currently, he lives and works in Palo Alto, CA.
A native of Wales, California-based artist Peter Ivanoff’s sculpture is all about going places. Crutches, ladders, plumbing fixtures, discarded furniture, and wheels deliver the message in his objects and installations. Driving this narrative, Ivanoff’s interest is in
our relationship with technology.
After the recent and ongoing wildfires, political turmoil and other disasters, his recent drawings, collages, and paintings have taken on an environmental and political shift. In these troubled times Ivanoff is presenting a much darker impression of California than for example, the artists David Hockney or Wayne Thiebaud.
Ivanoff’s techniques are purposely simple; collages are black India ink cut-outs
on Bristol and the paintings and works on paper are painted in acrylic.
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