As a promising young art student, Peter attended the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts, and Goldsmiths College, though in many ways his career shows the capacity for life to educate and inform, rather than a reliance on institutions or a ‘school’. When Peter’s part time studies at Goldsmith’s were interrupted by his national service call into the Royal Marines, for example, it was while embracing the discipline and hard work at sea that he found his love for literature. Concealed within the bowels of the peacetime vessel, the ships library became his inner sanctuary. He would go on to read extensively, every day, for the rest of his life.
Peter himself later hypothesised, in one of the few, self-reflective manuscripts we have written by the artist, on whether it was while at sea his obsession with birds might have began. As he saw the winged creatures wheeling around the vessel he appears to have become enamoured for life. Was Peter, from then on, to seek to replicate their freedom to move between various planes, to occupy their winged perspective, in order to span his “heap of things” and navigate his life as an artist? Certainly, at that time, after the collision of his childhood past with the discipline of the navy routine and a newly found cultural language he had access to through literature, the man who returned to London held a broader perspective from which to examine the world. Demobilised in 1951, he quickly married his childhood sweetheart, Kathleen, with whom he sought to make a life that would accommodate his artistic ambitions for the rest of his days.
The degree to which this layering, perceptivity of, and versioning of reality, could ever be integrated within one life as a singular model, from the blitz to the navy, from the lesser, professional world, to the ‘real’ world of creation he valued above all else, undoubtedly affected many areas of Peter’s life. While reportedly this view may have made him a difficult man to live with - at meals an under-stimulated and uncompromising Peter might refuse to speak to those at the table, if the subject matter were not to his taste - it was however, a rigorous approach that necessitated such rich and varied works, as Peter sought out his own personal symbolic language by means of the ‘perfection through craft’, that he saw as being always on an equal footing to concepts of artistry and art.
Whatever his overarching view at that time, the young man who, in the early 1950’s became a ‘visualiser’ in the advertising firm where he worked in Hyde Park, had already seen through the mere commercial value that society gave to art. In fact, perhaps more importantly than anything he could find in terms of paid work, it was during these professional years that the jewellery and enamelling teacher Brian Newble (author of Practical Enamelling & Jewelry Work: 1967 The Viking Press - New York.), in the shop next door to the Notting Hill flat he and Kate shared, imparted another vital element of information for Peter to take onto his journey as an artist.
Peter’s direction never wavered from the prioritising of artistic and craft based purity, over monetary gain. Later in life, even during his own exhibitions, Peter was notoriously shy with the dealers who complimented his work, and largely shunned the expected niceties of the ‘art market’. Instead he preferred to have a quick drink and return to The Abbey and to his dedication to the craft, his “Heap of things”.
When German bombs ripped through London during the Blitz, Peter’s seamstress mother, Helen, insisted that her two young sons remain by her side. Peter’s father, an owner and performer in his own dance band, could hardly have hidden the destruction from his sons. In fact, Peter spoke of a ‘nightmare past’ in which he was forced to tap-dance on tables for the employees of a clothing manufacturer in Greenwich. For the Peter his family later knew, a disciplined man who kept close guard over the delineations in his life, who never spoke of the meaning within his works, these formative years could only have been a baptism of fire in which the very fabric of reality was torn apart.
While ‘the city’ as a motif is almost entirely absent from Peter’s work, this ‘heap of destruction’ that he witnessed during his childhood, cannot fail to be considered in relation to the “heap of things” he later sought out in art making, a method of striving for perfection through craft, a mechanical application of intention that caused him to peer beneath the surface of the world through his work, while disregarding what he considered to be petty surface issues of the current time.
This dedication to the detail of work in fact paradoxically meant an ever broadening of his scope. As Peter found seams, pathways, and routes of meaning to follow, so these meant ambitiously pursuing different techniques throughout his life.
life at the abbey
By the time Peter, his wife Kate and their son Adam moved to Suffolk he was already a man of singular vision and determination regarding the making of art. The move was in many ways necessitated by Peter’s requirement for more space. He had three studios in total, two outdoor and one attic workroom on the third, leaning floor of the large family house. Using this grand living space, the larger than life characters of Peter, Kate, and Walter Lassally - the German born, Oscar winning lodger who came with them during the move - and young Adam, (who used Walter’s Oscar statue, it is said, as a door stop for a time) were able to create an environment of unbridled production and a sanctuary for ideas.
For his part, in order to do just that, Peter followed a strict, set routine. He woke every day at six, and would be busy at work in one of the three studios by seven every morning. He never took a day off. Although this is not to say he was dictatorial with his time while inside of his routine. Adam speaks of a father who could be interrupted despite his dedication to his work, whose door was always open, and who could step out for a moment from the position of inspiration, thanks to his discipline and dedication at attaining the state required for work.
Peter never watched television and was not interested in politics or the news. In the background every day, however, Terry Wogan, one of his favourite presenters, would relay the world to him from a distance, as Peter worked, often laughing, in one of his three studios.
Whatever the working day had brought, at 6pm it was time to down tools. Then the kitchen table in The Abbey became Peter’s place of repose and where, if he was lucky, someone interesting would be along to visit and to talk. Peter was a curious mix of isolationist and sociability. He could fall silent with those who spoke of subjects he found boring, while becoming unusually alive, excitedly engaging in a play of ideas across the long wooden kitchen table, which Peter and Kate had transported from a breakers yard in Soho, and which he could occupy late into the night if the right person had come along. Peter’s literature tastes stretched from the classics, the myths, to spy biographies and crime novels. Through his love of fakery, art, literature, and subterfuge, he sought in those conversation to continue to peer beneath the surface of things, was enthralled by an inquisitiveness for double meanings and conspiracy, of which he never tired of talking and with which he furnished his “Heap of things”.
Whatever the night’s events however, the next morning he would be up early and in his studio by seven, to return to the endless pursuit he called work.
Although Peter would at no point speak of the meaning of his work to friends or family, he was prepared to listen and converse for hours regarding mechanical or technical issues pertaining to his work. Ultimately, he enjoyed imparting knowledge, and receiving it, and saw no reason not to listen to someone with less experience if a lesson could be learned. When Peter’s Albion press refused to print accurately and one of his son’s friends had something to share, the two men from different worlds could end up tinkering together for hours with layers of newspaper outside the kitchen, in order to find the right nuance for the machine.
Although Peter had no time for news or current affairs, he was not adverse to certain films, and particularly loved Westerns. He was drawn to the loan figure entering a town, self reliant and alone. He combined this simple version of masculinity with an animated playfulness in his studio. It was a playfulness that could be endearing and charming for friends. Finding a novelty Roman ruler for sale in a gift shop, with inches that differed from standard measurements, he bought six and gave the strange items away as gifts with a childlike enthusiasm. Silent about his own work, he saw the layers of meaning in standard reality as gifts to play with. We can look at this paradoxically alongside the man Adam described as tortured when receiving wrapped presents at Christmas. The limits of this playfulness and his sense of what was personal had to be respected, otherwise the isolated artist would return to his workroom. However, Adam’s portrayal of his father shows a man who, rather than ever sulking, like the birds he was drawn to represent throughout his career, rather, simply moved to another branch, another layer of his “heap”, when he required an escape.
When Peter died unexpectedly in 1989, out walking his dogs, he had lived a life of deep satisfaction. If he admired carpenters for the way they were connected to their tools, as an extension of their body, at his end, Peter too had come some way in achieving that idealised state. Maybe this is why he always had time to put things down and to listen, to remain easy, free, and full of joy while he worked. Straddled between the seriousness of craft and a dedication to playfulness, both human and flawed as a man, and eternally disciplined as an artist, in his mission of self-realisation through craft and hard work, Peter’s was a life well lived, and one that leaves us with so much. With a dedication and a vision to which we can only aspire, while examining the breadth and scope of his work, it is difficult to feel anything but a deep gratitude and appreciation for what remains of Peter’s “Heap of Things”.