Featured Works

David Allan Peters is included in the group exhibition Hybrid Spaces at Borusan Contemporary in Istanbul, Turkey.

David Allan Peters creates work that explodes with countless layers of color and intricate texture, combining painting with sculptural hand-carved qualities. Diamonds, grids and circles create kaleidoscopic compositions that vibrantly explore geometry, intuition and chance. He has become known for his innovative process of building up material which is then peeled and cut away exposing what is below the initial surface, unveiling various colors at different depths. Peters sometimes works for 15 years on a single painting, painstakingly applying layer upon layer of acrylic paint and then cutting, scraping, sanding and carving into the layers to show the passage of time similar to the rings of a tree trunk. From the by-products of his paintings, Peters recycles the carved-out remnants into bricks forming minimalist installations. He pushes the limits of acrylic paint and the traditional painting processes, while dissolving the boundary between the second and third dimension.

This month, eleven paintings by David Allan Peters are on view in New York at Miles McEnery Gallery. The category of “painting” however, seems too restrictive for this unique process. Though each is technically made of paint, the mesmerizing visual effect is achieved by carving thousands of gouges into the thick surface that reveals an explosion of color layers.

by Lukas Périer

In September of 2014 The Anderson Collection at Stanford University opened in a 30,000-square-foot-building designed by Ennead Architects, showcasing 121 works from 86 artists (among them, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Wayne Theibaud). 

1. To truly understand the work of David Allan Peters, you have to know the process behind it. After layering countless sheathes of paint, the artist carves the surface, removing small chunks and lines that when viewed from far away, reveal an intricate geometric pattern. 

David Allan Peters : Sheathes

Film by Eric Minh Swenson

Royale Projects is proud to present a solo exhibition of new works by Los Angeles artist David Allan Peters from 22 January to 31 March 2017. There will be an open house from 12 to 5 pm on Sunday, 22 January 2017. 

David Allan Peters’ hallucinogenic paintings have a vibrant quality that is distinctly Californian. Inspired by the natural beauty of his West Coast home, the Cupertino native renders the area’s flora and neon haze into radiant, fractal-like patterns. At first, his midsized paintings on wood panels might appear to be composed of simple brushstrokes, but the reality of Peters’ process is much more complex.

You could say that L.A. artist David Allan Peters has an affinity for rules — though it's hardly apparent when first viewing his work.

John Seed Interviews David Allan Peters:

David Allan Peters, whose work is on view at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe through April 19th, has been building heavily layered paintings that he carves into to reveal rich stratigraphies of color. Kaleidoscopic in their intensity, Peters' works are both intuitive excavations and explorations of pattern.

I recently spoke to David Allan Peters and asked him about his background, his education and his methods.

Collector Profile: Harry and Margaret Anderson

When Hunk Anderson was a senior at Hobart College in Geneva, New York, in 1948, he and two enterprising classmates started providing meals for students who were hungry after dining-hall hours. Initially investing $500 each, the three partners grew Saga, their grassroots business, into the nation’s largest college food-service contractor. In 1962 they moved their headquarters to Menlo Park, California, adjacent to Stanford University.

As pioneering West Coast art collectors, Harry W. Anderson, who still goes by his beefy nickname, and his wife, Mary Margaret, known as Moo, have shown the same sort of American pluck and ingenuity that made Saga so successful. “We were absolute novices,” says Hunk, recalling a 1964 visit to the Louvre. “On our way home from Paris, we decided to see if we could become knowledgeable about art and put together a dozen paintings and sculptures.” They began a process of self-education that blossomed into a passion around which they have structured their lives for 50 years. The result: one of the most significant private collections of postwar American art in the world, with more than 800 works displayed throughout their ranch-style home in the Northern California Bay Area—built in 1969 with art installation in mind—and a nearby nine-building office campus designed in 1964. (Saga was sold to Marriott in 1986, but Hunk retained his office and continues to exhibit art throughout the hilltop complex, renamed Quadrus.)

For this Los Angeles artist, the process of painting is highly physical, building up layers of color and then cutting away.

From a distance, David Allan Peter’s small-scale abstract paintings appear to buzz with dashes of vibrant color.  These kaleidoscopic patterns may radiate over the entire panel in starburst formations, as in Untitled #13, or abutting triangles, as in Untitled #7, both made this year. But when seen up close, what look like Impressionistic brushstrokes reveal themselves to be tiny but precise indentations, carved into surfaces that have been built up with dozens of shimmering layers of acrylic paint.