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Since the early 1990s, Peter Brown has painted the urban landscape as a way of recording contemporary human experience. Placing himself at the beating heart of cities such as Glasgow, London, Bristol, Toronto and his hometown of Bath, he explores, studies and records the unique personality of each environment – its topography, its citizens and the amassed energy they combine to create.

His paintings are a product of direct interaction with place painted from life and in life. There is a veracity to his observations that can only come from the experienced and the observed; something that he has been doing his whole life, in weathers inclement and accommodating – a way of working that has earned him the title ‘Pete the Street’ and a popular following.

‘I’m a bit fascinated by Pete the Street – he paints what you can’t see, as much as what you can. I know he’s just applying paint to a bit of board, so how come his pictures tell you the temperature, the moisture, the smell? How the hell does he do that?’ – Banksy

Of course, no city is anything without its people and perhaps the greatest, most identifiable and most characteristic of all are the citizens of New York. Every artist seeks fresh challenges to push their work forward and, in the last two years, Brown has been tackling the iconic landscape of New York City. In that time, he has painted nearly 30 works, travelling from his base in Brooklyn on the B,Q and D lines and beyond, following loosely a journey from Coney Island to the Upper East Side, responding to both the awesome scale of the city and the minutiae of chaotic details that he observed along the way.

‘I work entirely from life using the cities and the countryside as my subjects. I start with what tickles me, and this is likely to be a certain play of the light, weather, space and everyday life. Most of my drawings and paintings take several sittings over consecutive days and in that time, I may meet police officers, dog walkers, road sweepers, residents, and tourists.’ – Peter Brown

There is a long tradition of Impressionist street painting in America, and New York produced some of its finest artists in the genre, from Childe Hassam to William Merritt Chase. However, it is perhaps towards the observational records of John Sloan or George Bellows that Brown edges more closely. Brown is drawn to a crowd rather than architectural landmarks, and whilst he doesn’t consider himself to be a portrait artist, he loves to capture people going about their business – from families crowded onto a sunny beach to the hustle and bustle of city life and quiet observed corners. In that, his works are observational records that are unquestionably of now and will stay steady as documents of lived moments whilst time moves on. That is perhaps one of the wonderful ironies of his works; they are all entirely composed of sequences of seen moments not all happening at the same time. But the fact that they did and are recorded somehow makes the painted scene all the more real and even trustworthy as a study of a place and a moment.

Working mostly in oil, but sometimes charcoal, and very occasionally pastel, Brown has received numerous awards and is a member of several national art societies, most notably the New English Art Club, where he has recently completed a five-year term as the society’s President.