I am excited to have a new painting as part of Last Rites Gallery's fifth anniversary exhibition.  I also currently have work at Pop Gallery in Santa Fe, Forgotten Saints in Hollywood, and WWA Gallery in Culver City.  All the details are on my "Shows" page.

Here is the two minute film from my previous show at Last Rites Gallery in New York:



Chris Peters Unexpected News 

Unexpected News

Oil on Linen over Panel
23 x 20 inches
2010
Chris Peters | All My Love | Skeleton Painting

All My Love

Oil on Linen over Panel
20 x 16 inches
2009
Chris Peters | Leave The Shame Behind | Skeleton Painting

Leave The Shame Behind

Oil on Linen over Panel
20 x 22 inches
2007
Chris Peters | To Hold You Again | Skeleton Painting

To Hold You Again

Oil on Linen over Panel
24 x 18 inches
2007
Chris Peters The Shadow and The Light 

The Shadow and
the Light

Oil on Linen over Panel
21 x 20 inches
2010
Chris Peters | To Love and Protect | Skeleton Painting | Mike Dirnt, Greenday

To Love and Protect

Oil on Linen over Panel
24 x 18 inches
2008
Chris Peters | No Protection | Skull Still Life Painting | Jesse Metcalfe, Actor

No Protection

Oil on Canvas
20 x 26 inches
2005

Finding Beauty in Dark Places

The Germans have a word "unheimlich" that is difficult to translate into English, although a blur between the words "uncanny" and "eerie" perhaps comes the closest to providing a definition.

In each of my paintings, I am trying to find the beauty in that uneasy twilight place between life and death, between reality and unreality, between self and what writer H.P. Lovecraft called "the others".

The objects in my paintings draw from the classic symbolism of Vanitas still life and Catholic religious paintings; all refer to the cycle of life, death, and the promise of resurrection.

I love this poem by Emily Dickinson:

I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.

He questioned softly why I failed?
"For beauty," I replied.
"And I for truth, -the two are one;
We brethren are," he said.

And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.

My entire body of work is an attempt to capture the feeling I get every time I read it. One day I might succeed, until then here are my paintings...