My work is the manifestation of my most optimistic and positive feelings about the world and my experience in it. It is my attempt to generate meaning for myself and hopefully for other people. For me, painting is the act of reaching out to feel the world, of trying to organize and dramatize the existent into a painting. I take great pleasure in the tension that exists between the abstract nature of a painted surface and the possibility of that surface to evoke something beyond itself.
Peter Van Dyck (b.1978, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) studied painting and drawing at the Florence Academy of Art in Florence, Italy from 1998–2002. He returned to Philadelphia in 2002 and began exhibiting his work in group shows in Philadelphia, New York and San Francisco. He has had solo shows at John Pence Gallery, San Francisco in 2004; Eleanor Ettinger Gallery, New York, 2006; John Pence Gallery, 2008,The Grenning Gallery, Sag Harbor, 2010, Harrisburg Area Community College in 2020 and Sugarlift Gallery, New York 2022 and Blue Spiral Gallery, Asheville, NC 2023. In 2003 he began teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts where he is currently an Associate Professor in the BFA program.
