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Peter Acheson was born in Washington, DC, in 1954 and received his BFA from Yale University in 1976. An early member of Williamsburg’s art scene in the 1980s, he relocated to upstate New York in the 1990s, where he continues to live and work in Columbia County.
His paintings range from textured abstractions to restrained gestures that draw on a wide range of influences, including nineteenth-century French painting, Blinky Palermo, Raoul De Keyser, Bill Jensen, and Forrest Bess, alongside close observation of the landscape surrounding his studio.
Acheson’s concern is less with resolving these references than it is to allow them to coexist, permitting his paintings to act as habitats where various traditions and approaches can meet without hierarchy. This carries through to Acheson’s playful way of treating his compositions, leaving them caught between styles, simultaneously structured and chaotic, with direct references and happenstance similarity.
His work has been exhibited at Anton Kern Gallery, New York; Steven Harvey Fine Arts, New York; Gordon Robichaux, New York; Brennan & Griffin, New York; Novella Gallery, New York; John Davis Gallery, Hudson, New York; the American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; Elizabeth Harris Gallery, New York; and Baumgartner Gallery, New York. His work has been discussed in Hyperallergic and The Brooklyn Rail.
