Peter Holbrook

B. 1940 - D. 2016

My art career started at the age of 7 when I won an art competition in 1st grade. The prize was a book of reproductions from the National Gallery. I still have the book and the paintings that won it. My first solo show was in the Carpenter Galleries at Dartmouth College in 1960. It was a surprising commercial success. That money and a foreign study grant enabled me to travel and study for 2 years after graduation in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, India and East and South Africa. Upon my return to the states, I put in a further year of study at the Brooklyn Museum Art School in New York. That was followed by 7 years in Chicago, working various jobs, beginning to exhibit professionally and finally lecturing at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle campus. With my savings I moved "back-to-the-land" in 1970, buying rural acreage in the coastal hills of N. California. I taught for another 2 years at Cal State Hayward while homesteading my property and continuing to exhibit in Chicago and California; then in Arizona and New Mexico. Along the way I accumulated a wife and 2 kids. This year (2015) I am readying my 58th one man show.  I continue to explore how and what I want to paint.