"Mark Peterson"

Mark Peterson's childhood was itinerant in nature; the son of a land surveyor, his family traveled often, and while one might be tempted to draw a direct line between his origins and the pervasive Americaness - a general and inherent feeling of America, that is - in his paintings, it's better to see his childhood not as a direct cause, but as a number of experiences that opened up a path for Peterson to become the painter he is.

America is nostalgia, and whether that nostalgia is for a real or an imagined past, well, the point might very well be moot by now as the distinction gets more and more blurry as each day goes by. However, Peterson's work takes this blur and uses it to his aesthetic advantage. Let's take the most difficult case, "The Interior of St. Peter's". Here the overt connections with America are tenuous, but Peterson's style captures the nostalgia in a concrete way, especially in the manner that the Basilica is skewed in order to make it more beautiful and more overwhelming.

-Andrew Beckerman