Community directory

Peter Mark Butler - Painter and Poet (Welwyn Garden City)

Contact Peter Butler

Phone: 01707 328348
07074 241142
Fax: 01707 395505
email: peter.butler@artandverse.com

Web pages: www.artandverse.com

The following verse accompanies the acrylic painting 'Innocence Betrayed', completed in August 2008, which is featured above.

Innocence Betrayed

Bowie knife and blade, once tools of the trade
For youngsters bent on honing talents
Like whittling timber. Just youthful pranks
With not a thought of malicious intent.
An innocence betrayed in these dark days
Of indulgent excess and intemperate rage,
By volatile youths, tempers ablaze,
Flaunting blades to slash and to maim.

The following description appears on the Authenfication Certificate, which is issued with the print:

"These sheaf knives are mine. The painting and poem were inspired by my 17 year old granddaughter who is horrified by the spate of teenage knife attacks in our cities. She urged me to paint the knives and write the poem about the differences in society now and when I was her age. In my youth back in the 1950s, life was more relaxed and people were far more at ease with each other. As youngsters we were permitted to carry sheaf knives and used them in all innocence, perhaps to whittle away at wood. Then, come age 17 or 18 we'd lose interest in them. Not so today when, scarred by a society ill at ease with itself, malcontented youths carry knives if not with malicious intent then for self preservation. By the way, the catapult is mine too. I made it when I was 14 or 15."

Artist statement:
I have always stuck to the advice of my long departed friend and mentor, Royal Academician Frederick C Dickinson, to keep to my own style and vivid use of colours. In more recent years I have written poems to complement my paintings and I continue to enjoy the vibrant synergy of art and verse.

Signed edition Giclee prints, combining my paintings and poems, are individually produced, signed, numbered and dated by myself and on request, I am happy to include brief, personalized messages. An authentication certificate is supplied with each print.

Whether my paintings inspire my poems or my poems my paintings, they are inextricably and uniquely interwoven. From landscapes to seascapes, portraits to animals or wildlife encompassing England, Scotland and America, I revel in the vibrant use of pigments and diversity of oils, acrylics and watercolors, all magically captured by the Giclee process.

Awards:
Entered my original oil painting of ‘The Fawn’ for a UK wildlife art competition in 1993 but it was stolen whilst on display. A friend called the theft ‘the height of flattery’. But I repainted my Scottish fawn in acrylics and although too late to be judged, the exhibitors hung it in pride of place amongst the competition finalists. I have been reluctant to repeat this experience!

Training:
Tutor and mentor, Frederick C Dickinson, Royal Academician, 1872 - 1966.