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BIOGRAPHY
At the age of 15, Peter Rutty was accepted as a full time student at Hornsey College of Art, London, where he studied for the next five years, specialising in illustration. On leaving college he worked initially in advertising, but chose after a few years to set-up his own graphic design company in order to have more influence over the style and quality of his work.
The company flourished and expanded with designers and artists based in both the UK and The Netherlands, servicing major international clients. As the International Art Director he built a reputation both for designing prestigious corporate literature and for his illustrations. He was commissioned by ICI, the major international chemical company, to produce a series of twelve painted illustrations for their calendar.
He also expanded into other areas, producing and directing various short films and animations and designing a number of exhibitions, the most notable being the principal exhibition for the very first United Nations World Congress on the Human Environment, held in Stockholm.
His interest had always been in designing and illustrating, but in the 1990s he developed an overwhelming desire to paint. For several years he painted in tandem with his design career until 1998 when he retired from the world of graphics to paint intensively full time. Being financially secure, it is only recently that he has chosen to begin exhibiting and selling his work.
ARTIST'S STATEMENT
All my life I worked with the considerations of the client in mind, which, while producing prestigious design and illustration, was always motivated by the need for novelty and impact. In my painting I wanted to avoid this approach, which seems so often to be a substitute for quality and individuality of style. I wanted my paintings to be appreciated as painting, for the style, for the composition, for the use of paint.
To me a painting is a new thing. It needs no prior knowledge, no history, no background and no explanation. A painting is part painter, part subject, part paint, part accident, part viewer, part light, part intellect, part emotion. It is how I feel as a painter and how the viewer feels about that subject on that day at that time. It is a shared experience.
Each new painting is a new relationship. It can be a love affair or a bitter struggle. I am excited by where a painting takes me and the journey I make with it, the uncertainty of not knowing how it will be. I love the quality of paint, its accidents and the whole energy of paint and painting. To me, that's what makes a painting, not the expectation that it will or should reveal the meaning of life. It is what it is....a painting....and that's enough.
