Peter Stichbury (artist)

Peter Stichbury, born Auckland 1969, is a New Zealand artist.

Stichbury graduated from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1997. He won New Zealand’s prestigious Wallace Art Awards the same year. Stichbury is primarily a painter but his body of work also spans the mediums of drawing, watercolour, sculpture and sound based work.

Stichbury is most renowned for his intricate yet flat portraits of models and modern beauties sourced from contemporary media images, which he reworks to create abhorrently exquisite doe eyed specimens both startlingly attractive and awkwardly ugly. His work also explores those who don't measure up to conventional beauty ideals and who are therefore rendered socially invisible: misfits, outsiders and intellectuals. He draws partly from haute couture catwalk culture, modern psychology and sociology, alien conspiracy theory, and a pared down 1950's aesthetic to make a painterly comment on the dilemma of beauty and society's obsession with appearance. Stichbury subverts traditional conventions of portraiture, often painting a generalised stereotype of a societal group, as opposed to the specific character study a portrait painter seeks to achieve. His work is simultaneously intertwined with and influenced by popular culture and historical painters including Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Lucien Freud.

English model Lily Donaldson is a favourite subject.

He is represented in New Zealand by Starkwhite.

External Links

[1] Peter Stichbury at Starkwhite Gallery, New Zealand
[2] Artspace, New Zealand
[3] NZ Herald review: Dear patrons, wish you were here.
[4] NZ Herald article: Beautifying the outsiders.
[5] Stichbury tumblelog