Peter Sullivan

Brooklyn-based painter Peter Sullivan straddles the line between abstraction and figuration in his brightly colored canvases and works on paper. Sullivan imbues relatively banal images, such as street-level views of buildings and parked cars, with an unlikely energy, covering his canvases with erratic, short brushstrokes in vivid colors. These paint marks rely on the careful arrangement of color and negative space to coalesce into identifiable images, yet the configurations seems simultaneously poised to disintegrate into purely abstract forms. Working with both oil paints and gouache, Sullivan exploits each medium to its full potential, emphasizing color in each composition.