My journey so far

My love for visual arts goes back to my childhood when, in my grandparents’ house, I admiringly gazed at the landscape paintings of an ancestor of mine who, in his time, was a well-known artist. I couldn’t get enough of the magic how uncle Karcsi’s masterful technique had evoked the sunlight spouting from beyond the clouds, the changeful nature of water or the spirit of the seasons. Impressed by this early experience, I started to paint and draw and kept on until my 20’s. Then, for many years, apart from short periods, my creative activities were kept back but, the desire for self-expression never really hushed. In 2009, I discovered photography which opened new doors for my creativity. The years passed since have been filled with continous experimentation; I gained experience in a number of photographic genres.

My début as an artist came in 2012, with an exhibition in Kazincbarcika, the town where I was born. The imagery displayed mainly consisted of urban landscape pictures but some experimental images of surrealist nature, created using digital image editing techniques, were also exhibited. The next year, this was followed by an open-air photo screening entitled Then and Now, in a chain of events making up the first Kolor Fesztivál (Colour Festival) in Kazincbarcika. The images shown were, on the one hand, old photos obtained from an online archive and, on the other hand, my fresh pictures. The show instantiated the past and present of my hometown. Later, some of my photos were used as illustrations, in two poetry books.

My artistic experiments, initially quite diversified, began to show more convergence as far as the subject matter is concerned: I started to focus on human emotions, consciousness, spirituality and deep questions of existence. In a parallel process, the form also became more coherent: these days, I mostly create black and white, expressionistic imagery, sometimes featuring abstract or surreal elements. In the spring of 2016, I was invited to present my B&W photo series entitled Looking inward, within the frame of a public event which also included an interview and a conversation with the audience. Since then, the series has been exhibited at several locations in my hometown and nearby settlements.

I have created this website, in part, to sum up the first chapter of my visual experiments between 2009 and 2016, organized by theme/subject and other considerations. I have found great pleasure in exploring every theme and genre so far. Though I am planning to launch another site for my brand new work, fresh content will be uploaded to petersview.hu regularly, including new and old (sometimes reworked) pictures, complemented by my thoughts and articles.