About

Peter Harpley was born in London, England in 1961, the 3rd child of artists Sydney Harpley RA and Sally Holliday. His earliest artistic interests were with the camera and was quick to join photographic clubs at school where he could learn about processing and printing.

His first professional work was in straightforward commercial portrait work and weddings. While hardly stretching him artistically, it fulfilled an interest in the human form. It wasn’t until 1990, following a trip to Africa that landscape work first interested Harpley. This trip generated a body or work which was made into an exhibition called ‘The Leopard’s Tree’. This toured England and went to Dublin, Ireland.

The work shown on the site here was born from the aftermath of a heavy rain shower. Harpley was sitting outside a coffee shop and was looking in wonder at the clouds as they parted.

‘The clouds had an incredible drama to them. The sun was getting low so was striking them almost horizontally – which high lit the edges. I was wondering, how would you capture this amazing drama photographically, and realised that it was mere fragments of the clouds which interested me, not the expanse of sky…’

Peter Harpley completed a small series of work where an image was made up of square photographs of parts of clouds which all went together into a grid within the frame.

‘I found this processing interesting but ultimately frustrating as in assembling them in the frame, it was rare that images matched all that well. I realised that I would have to embrace the digital revolution and create the images in the computer. By scanning in traditionally shot images. I could use software to meld them together, forcing them to become the shapes I was looking for. I found that I could in fact paint in clouds’.

Other elements have appeared following the initial works (‘Ascension’ ‘The View From Without’ and ‘Circle of Light’) such as leaves and water / waves. Harpley has also started working in the pure abstract field.