Peter Deacon
Painter Peter Deacon finds inspiration in Japanese and Chinese painting and the cultures that produced them. Since 1975, he has served as an art instructor, professor, and advisor at the University of Calgary’s Department of Art.
Born on the Isle of Wight, England, Deacon attended Portsmouth College of Art where he received his B.F.A. He earned his M.Ed. at the University of Wales in Cardiff, and his M.F.A. from the University of London’s Slade School of Art in 1970. Via an Abby Major Scholarship in Painting called the Prix de Rome award, Deacon worked in Rome between 1970 and 1972 as the resident painter of the British School at Rome. After serving an artist’s residency at the University of Nottingham in England (1973 – 1975), Deacon moved to Canada to teach at the University of Calgary (U of C) where he remained for the rest of his career.
Through his studies under Chinese artist Chin Shek Lam, Deacon deepened his appreciation of Chinese and Japanese aesthetics, and many of his later works contain Chinese elements. His collages are based upon the interplay of what he calls “Prime Elements” such as geography, personal experience, prime numbers, and primary colors.
Deacon has received numerous honours, including appointment to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (1995), and a fellowship with the U of C Faculty of Engineering to design and run a Problem Solving through Visualisation programme (2003). He holds membership in numerous bodies including the Arts Council of Great Britain, the Print and Drawing Council of Canada, the Artists Circle of Calgary’s Triangle Gallery, and the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He was also chair of the Review Committee of the Alberta Art Foundation (Calgary) from 1977-1979.
Deacon has mounted solo shows in Alberta and the United States including Facing West, Landscape and Memory, and Solstice, and participated in a range of group exhibitions across North America and Europe. Dozens of major public and corporate collections and numerous private collections hold his work.
