Piece description from the artist
The Tubbs fire in 2015 was a devastating wildfire that the artist Peter Ivanoff experienced first hand. After touring the devastation, the artist became profoundly influenced by the new blackened local landscape. In reaction and to perhaps gain a sense of control, Ivanoff streamlined his approach to creating art by simplifying his materials and methods deciding to work only with the technique of collage with India ink. From this point on for the next few years black seeped steadily into the artist’s work. Evident with-in the blackness, however are a variety of subtle shifts in tone, texture and surface. The collages in the Painted Black series are created with applications of washes of India ink with a mastery of the medium that is only possible to fully appreciate in the original works.
The first in a series of collages depicting roads the artist Peter Ivanoff’s approach is at once in synch with the past and connected to the role of the artist in the present. The road and the road trip is a very American concept and Road, the collage, simple, iconic and monolithic is an invitation to move forward into the future. Automobiles provide a convenient way to get from point A to point B, but they also define and shape us defining how and where we live. In America native cultures once walked the landscape on foot, then settlers came by horseback and wagons, now we travel on paved highways so smooth and mind numbing they lull you to into sleep.
In the collage Road the artist Peter Ivanoff renders the road as an object, foreign to the natural world or perhaps in the words of Henry Miller, “If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things”.
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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