Peter McRury
Peter McRury grew up in Toronto with a father who makes prints. He studied cognitive systems and has spent several years working in digital design, painting alongside it. He paints flowers, animals and people with an airbrush. He started using it as "a way of translating digital imagery into paint." Last year he moved from Austin to Los Angeles with his wife and their dog, Mo. He now paints in a new studio after working out of a small backyard workshop. In November he has a solo show in Los Angeles and a group show in New York.
Q: First of all, tell us a bit about yourself. How did you end up an artist in Los Angeles?
A: I grew up in Toronto with a father who makes prints, so art was part of my life early on. I studied cognitive systems and have worked in digital design for the last six or seven years, developing my painting practice alongside that. My wife works in the history of art and architecture, and we wanted to live somewhere that would give us both more to engage with creatively. That brought us from Austin to Los Angeles last year with our dog, Mo. I've recently moved into a new studio space as I prepare for my first solo presentation here.
Q: Take us through your studio. What's your routine?
A: Until recently, I'd been working in a small backyard workshop. The new studio has better light and ventilation, and enough room to keep several paintings in view at once. I tend to alternate between painting and stepping back to look, building up thin layers and assessing the changes as I go. I often photograph works in progress and experiment with the photos on my computer, trying out shifts in color temperature or value before applying the next layer. Moving between those digital studies and the paintings has become a regular part of how I work.
Q: You paint with an airbrush on linen. How did you come to work that way?
A: I was initially drawn to the airbrush as a way of translating digital imagery into paint. Masking and smooth gradients on a perfectly gessoed canvas allowed for a degree of precision with very little visual noise. Over the last few years, my interest has shifted toward the painting as a physical object, where the surface is integral to the image. Using transparent paint on linen keeps its color and weave visible through each layer. The image is continually altered by the material it's painted on and by previous layers, making the process less predictable. That interaction has become central to the work.
Q: You showed with Rosie Clements in Surface Tension. How did that come about?
A: Our work deals with different subjects, but a connection between our practices is an interest in what happens to images as they're reproduced and circulated. Online, images are compressed, cropped, and removed from their original context. Details disappear, noise accumulates, and those changes become part of how we know the image. We approach this through different processes, but share an interest in what survives that loss of information and what emerges from it. Showing together at McLennon Pen Co. in Austin gave those connections more room to be seen.
Q: Where do the memories and moods in your pieces come from?
A: Memory and mood relate more to how I render an image than to its subject. I'm interested in how an image can acquire the qualities of those kinds of mental states through softened edges, transparency, and the omission of detail. The subject remains recognizable, but becomes harder to place. That sense of familiarity and distance comes from the way it's painted, rather than from a particular memory I'm trying to recreate.
Q: You have a solo show and a group show coming up in November. What can you tell us about them?
A: Neither exhibition has been announced yet, but I'm very much looking forward to a solo presentation in Los Angeles and a group exhibition in New York. I'm continuing to develop my current body of work, with figures, animals, flowers, and still lifes recurring across the paintings. I've been trying to allow each work more independence, without determining in advance how it will function within a group. I'm interested in seeing which relationships emerge through making the paintings and trusting that certain works will naturally belong together as they develop.
