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peter wray re

Peter Wray is a printmaker and painter who lives and works in York, England. We are a major exhibitor of his work, holding a broad selection of his original prints in stock on a permanent basis.

He studied at Strawberry Hill College, Twickenham, Goldsmiths College, London and Leeds Metropolitan University. He has been involved in printmaking for over 30 years, and has exhibited extensively in the U.K, Ireland, Europe, U.S.A. and Japan including the New Academy Gallery in London, Blenheim Gallery, London, the Original Print Gallery, Dublin, Tesser Gallery in London, Gallery S in Amsterdam and Southcliffe Gallery, Darwin, Australia. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 1992 and his work is held by a number of prestigious galleries in England, Ireland and the Netherlands, and by numerous corporations, institutions and private collections including Unilever, Sainsbury’s, Price-Waterhouse and the Bank of England.

Peter Wray was trained as a painter, extending his practice into printmaking in the early 1970s, after being exposed to the richness and unique expressive power of the intaglio surface. With his background in painting, and being largely self-taught as a printmaker, the integration of painterly methodology into the graphic process was a natural development, and it is this combination of approach which gives his work its distinctive style: “prints about painting, and paintings about prints”.

His influences are many: semi-religious symbols remembered from a Catholic childhood; the exquisite, accidental, sculptural imagery of the allotment garden; graffiti and cave paintings enjoyed on travels abroad; the childhood fascination with the ‘printed’ images of fossils found in the shale tips near his home; early memories of coal-mining and, later, steelworks industries, where numbers, shapes, words and marks chalked on oxidising steel panels held a mystery of meaning which continues to weave its spell for him.. Music has been a major influence: Irish traditional music in particular has made a deep and lasting impression, with its melodies providing a counterpoint for all kinds of musical adventures which underpin it and are held within it. He loves to explore the question, – what is important: the dominant melody, or those qualities that contain it or are contained within it? There is no such thing as “just a tune”, as there is no such thing as “just a drawing”. All of this is combined with a rejoicing in the qualities of materials and process and the ‘joy’ of making…

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Celestial navigation I Celestial Navigation II East Cleveland Image Teesside Image Estuary Penwith image I: Things which tie us to the land Penwith image II: Falling tide Penwith image III: Inlet Unread book, chapter 1: Fired Earth Fired earth Fired earth II Song of experience I Song of experience II Song of experience III Journey through a field of crosses Point of contact No. 2 Point of contact No. 3 Singing the landscape Many houses Remembered dreams Deconstruction I Deconstruction II Deconstruction III Where wave and spirit meet Landscape calligraphy II Bhi se rinceadh... Odyssey Odyssey no. 2 Fall of Icarus Travels in the land of the ice maiden Half-forgotten voices Whispering across the abyss Journey to a starting point I Journey to a starting point II Bridge of stories Newlyn nocturne