Peter Eastman

Peter Eastman (b. 1976) is a British-South Africa contemporary painter renowned for his experimental approach to painting. Based in Cape Town, Eastman works across a variety of mediums and techniques, employing substrates like aluminum and materials such as chrome, enamel, resin, wax, graphite, and oil paint. His process involves reworking, scraping, and incising the surface of his pieces to create paintings that balance representation and abstraction.

Know for his bold use of base colours, Eastman's work often appear mono- or duo-chromatic, featuring subtle lines and shapes articulated by thin ridges of paint or resin, adding dimension and complexity. Eastman's work is profoundly influenced by his surroundings—his lived interiors, cityscapes, family photographs, and landscapes familiar to him. His unique process disassembles and re-configures these images, producing new compositions that evoke a dreamlike familiarity, subtly blending memory and mood. As an artist rooted in the physicality of painting, Eastman’s work retains an authentic painterly quality, transcending the digital distortions and re-configurations prevalent in the age of technology.

Eastman has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions, with his work shown at prominent galleries such as Barnard Gallery, SMAC Gallery, and Everard Read. He has also been recognized in various art fairs, including the Cape Town Art Fair and the FNB Joburg Art Fair. His paintings have attracted international attention, with his pieces being offered at auction and achieving notable prices, including a record sale of "Riverbank I" at Aspire Art Auctions in 2019.

Through series such as Deep Chine, which explores a remote South African forest landscape, Eastman continues to evolve his practice, drawing on the natural world and his personal history to inform his ever-changing body of work.