Lamar Peterson - Episode 90

Lamar makes paintings and drawings that prioritize people relaxing and gardening in bucolic outdoor settings.

A person sitting on a lacy patio bench flanked by patches of radiant flowers and grape trees.

A gardener in work gloves, garden hose in hand, proudly posing in front of a raised flower bed.

a person having a picnic on the front lawn of a cartoonish purple house, strangely backlit by a brilliant sun.

Other paintings might offer us an x-ray view into a home to see everyday activities, like someone daydreaming while doing the dishes, or a figure as they lie awake during a failed daytime nap.

Lamar's compositional logic, graphic edges, and subtle paint blending lend themselves well to his aesthetic, which is wonderfully illustrative, forward, and playful.

Light and color temperature become ideas themselves.

Dimpled shadows might operate as a kind of camouflage within a scene, while the warm browns and ochres and pinks in his figures confidently rest in front of vivid blue skies and kaleidoscope flower fields that make up his imagined landscapes.

While the figures in his paintings might reference specific people, they operate more as flexible proxies, built from a collection of reference material and family photos.

In the paintings, these figures are usually centered and looking right at us, as if we were taking a snapshot and asked them to say cheese, capturing expressions that toggle between sincere and sly.

In this sense, Lamar is using portraiture, setting and narrative, and humor as vehicles to introduce ideas around lifestyle and identity, comfort and joy, strength and vulnerability.

We recorded this conversation remotely.

I was in my studio in Brooklyn while Lamar was at his home in Minneapolis.

Lamar makes paintings and drawings that prioritize people relaxing and gardening in bucolic outdoor settings.

A person sitting on a lacy patio bench flanked by patches of radiant flowers and grape trees.

A gardener in work gloves, garden hose in hand, proudly posing in front of a raised flower bed.

a person having a picnic on the front lawn of a cartoonish purple house, strangely backlit by a brilliant sun.

Other paintings might offer us an x-ray view into a home to see everyday activities, like someone daydreaming while doing the dishes, or a figure as they lie awake during a failed daytime nap.

Lamar's compositional logic, graphic edges, and subtle paint blending lend themselves well to his aesthetic, which is wonderfully illustrative, forward, and playful.

Light and color temperature become ideas themselves.

Dimpled shadows might operate as a kind of camouflage within a scene, while the warm browns and ochres and pinks in his figures confidently rest in front of vivid blue skies and kaleidoscope flower fields that make up his imagined landscapes.

While the figures in his paintings might reference specific people, they operate more as flexible proxies, built from a collection of reference material and family photos.

In the paintings, these figures are usually centered and looking right at us, as if we were taking a snapshot and asked them to say cheese, capturing expressions that toggle between sincere and sly.

In this sense, Lamar is using portraiture, setting and narrative, and humor as vehicles to introduce ideas around lifestyle and identity, comfort and joy, strength and vulnerability.

We recorded this conversation remotely.

I was in my studio in Brooklyn while Lamar was at his home in Minneapolis.