ARTIST

Peter Burega creates passionate, color-filled abstractions that reflect his enthusiasm for exploration, travel, and the infinite landscape of the imagination. Working on birch panels, Burega paint with oil and finishes with layers of semi-transparent glazing. The result is work that has uncommon depth and luminosity. Each piece is developed initially through extensive knife work and under-painting. In juxtaposition to the open movement and freedom of his pieces, he also incorporates structural borders. These architectural references create tension and give Burega’s work a context and a sense of grounding.

Burega favors the rigidity of board. Combining multiple panels in a single piece, he allows the grain of the wood to become an element of his composition.

In his paintings, Burega elicits pure visceral energy and imagery. Not adding anything or guiding the viewer with particular statements or direction, Burega draws the viewer in and engulfs both vision and soul.

Peter Burega initially trained as a concert pianist at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. Earning a degree in sociology from McGill University, he went on to study law and was a practicing attorney in Belgium and Los Angeles before painting took over his life. Between painting and practicing law, Burega directed commercials for television and short films.

In his recent work, Burega reaches deeper into his fascination with Native American lore and its applications within contemporary society. He further defines abstraction using landscape as a point of departure and the reminiscence of the ‘song line’---of making a place come alive by singing it into existence.

In Burega’s work, painting and song are inextricable. They guide each other in the same way that one is lead when painting the environment around us. The notion of the ‘song line’ has become relevant to Burega’s development as he, too, calls into existence the locations from which his work emerges.