"There are many different kinds of ‘intelligence’. For me and my work, intelligence stems from my love of process and how I choose to alter and amend the world around me".
Peter Burega was born 1965 in Montreal. During the 1980’s he studied at McGill University, Montreal and took his Juris Doctorate at Whittier College, Los Angeles, followed by a Comparative Law degree in Florence, Italy.
Burega came to painting after life as a concert pianist, a practicing lawyer and a television director and these past experiences have influenced and shaped his approach to being an artist. Having had his work exhibited extensively since 2001, he now divides his work and leisure time between his homes and studios in Savannah, Georgia and Saint Maarten in the Caribbean.
He begins with photography, using images taken during his extensive travels, whether of cloud formations, foaming waves or contrasting man-made structures. He superimposes, abstracts and painstakingly arranges them into stratified grid systems, continuing until he feels they act as a whole, convey his fluid intention and his ceaseless visceral energy. This montage is the starting point of reference and, whilst painting with a single tool and using most commonly oil onto board, he is then within a cerebral process which satisfies his preoccupation with the act of painting itself. Music also directs him. Often he will hear himself keeping time to a beat and harmony whilst he adds to or is reductive in his actions between the paint and the surface of the composition.
His work is described in various articles as possessing an embodiment of dualities: between organic and linear, man-made and nature, structure and amorphous, order and chaos; a clash between expressive abstracted energy and structured uniformity. Moreover, many have said that his work is ‘Turneresque’, with its suggestion of dramatic expansive skies and poignant filtrating light. The presence of this dichotomy is what defines Burega’s authorship and gives his compositions both their poetry and their strength. As he says himself, “…making them both percussive and soothing at once”.
Burega has had numerous solo exhibitions and participation in group shows for over 20 years and on a continual basis in well-known galleries. His work is held in the private collections of many household names and in the collections of Goldman Sachs, London; Grisanti Brown, LLC, New York; Bank of Georgia, Atlanta; PepsiCo, Dallas; Georgia Reinsure, New York; Pizza Hut Corp, Los Angeles; Bank of New York, Hong Kong; Four Seasons Hotels, Santa Fe, and Stafford, Frey & Cooper, Seattle. A selection of his most recent solo and group exhibitions are: Abbozzo Gallery, Toronto (2018-2023); Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, (2017-2023); LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe (2018-2023); SmithKlein, Colorado, (2017-2021); New York Paper Fair, New York, (2019); New River Fine Art, Ft Lauderdale, (2017-2019); Walter Wickiser Gallery, New York, (2017-2018); Hunter Kirkland Contemporary, Santa Fe, (2017, 2018); LA Art Fair, Los Angeles, (2018).