“Colors pop, surfaces gleam...Peter Dayton’s artwork, whether two or three-dimensional, radiates an electric energy.”
“I have always been an artist. I know that because my earliest memories of school were of teachers who would bring it to my attention and tell my parents too. I always felt like I had to be making art.
I think my idea of art is different from a lot of other artists in that I express myself in a neo-pop sort of way and reference other artists while concentrating on issues of surface and beauty. I try to stay outside of it. I keep my hand out of my work too and frequently use found photographic images of flowers and the look of the Xerox as I print the pictures and degrade the image. My work looks to me more like signage or posters, and it often has a commercial aspect to it that subverts the idea of fine art, yet strives to be beautiful and rewarding to the eye of the viewer.” — PD
Peter Dayton was born in New York City in 1955. He got a BFA from Tufts University, attended art schools in Europe in the 1970’s and finished with a degree and diploma from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. While at The Museum School he studied video and performance art and started pursuing music as an art project. After art school, he pursued music professionally, first in the punk rock band La Peste, then under his own name. He got back into visual art in 1988 and began showing brightly-colored flower collages, using photocopied images from seed catalogues that referenced Pop Art and Andy Warhol. In the last several years he has been making paintings on vertical plywood panels that mimic the brightly colored surfaces of surfboards that critique and explore commodity culture.
Dayton has exhibited in numerous galleries in the US and abroad, including the Eric Firestone Gallery, The Leiber Museum, and Glen Horrowitz, East Hampton; the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; Devin Borden Hiram Butler, Houston; and Morris-Healey Gallery, Los Angelos, Miami, and Basel, Switzerland. Solo shows include Winston Wachter, New York City; the Collective Design Fair, New York, NY; the Baldwin Gallery, Aspen, and the Drawing Room, East Hampton, NY.
He has also collaborated on numerous commercial and residential projects with the architect Peter Marino, including the elevator interiors in New York and Los Angles for Chanel and many other projects for Chanel boutiques worldwide. Dayton’s works are held in several private and public collections of Philip Morris & Co., New York as well as The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Guild Hall Museum, East Hampton, NY.
He lives and works in East Hampton, New York.
Peter Dayton by Jaime Lopez
ARTIST'S CAROUSEL
rotating exhibit of current & recently sold work
PETER DAYTON speaks to folioeast’s COCO MYERS
CM/ What brought you to the East End? And when?
PD/ My mother and stepfather moved to East Hampton in 1975. I would come out as a teenager in the early seventies with friends and go to the bluffs in Montauk .…no one around really back then. I decided to move here in1988 after art school and eleven years pursuing punk rock/new wave music professionally. I returned to making art and have been doing that ever since.
CM/How does this area influence or infiltrate your work?
PD/ Reflecting on nature is something thats very important to me. I marvel at the water and sky here every day.
CM/ Is there a running thread throughout your work?
PD/ I reference photography in almost all of my art.
CM/ What materials do you primarily use?
PD/ The usual …acrylic, resin, paper canvas etc. I have really very simple approach to making something. I like it to go quickly….speed is an important part of it sometimes.
CM/ Can you briefly describe your creative process, including any special or unusual techniques that you use in your art?
PD/ My process is simple. I enter the studio and take a hard look around. It’s a mess and it’s hard to decide what to do. I usually just pick up where I left off or I’ll have a flash of an new idea and i get right into it.
CM/ Do you draw inspiration or have a connection to the history of the abstract expressionist movement on the East End?
PD/ I do. I feel it. I live a mile or two from where Pollock and de Kooning lived and worked. The works that were made out here and elsewhere by the abstract expressionists are still an inspiration for me. In fact, I am exploring abstraction in a way that I have not before and to me it’s coming from the world we live in right now. Reality has taken a toll on me and I’ve been feeling all mixed up as most people I know do currently. I want to express that now.