Local artist Peter Midlane made himself comfortable in his studio at his home to speak to Grocott’s Mail about his latest work that he will be exhibiting at the Festival.
Local artist Peter Midlane made himself comfortable in his studio at his home to speak to Grocott’s Mail about his latest work that he will be exhibiting at the Festival.
Midlane has been exhibiting his work on and off since 1986, when he first returned to Grahamstown after studying FineArt at Rhodes University.
He received his Bachelor of Fine Art with distinction in painting in 1977 and taught graphic art at Johan Carinus Art School for 13 years and fine art for seven years at the Diocesan School for Girls where his daughter Claire went to school while his son James went to St Andrew’s College.
Midlane has been exhibiting his paintings for the past 24 years and has had no less than 23 exhibitions at the National Arts Festival, some of which were joint exhibitions.
“The Festival gave me an opportunity to start exhibiting, when before I hadn’t had the confidence or the opportunity to, and then it became a continuing thing.
There are people that kind of look for me, and I suppose assume I’ll exhibit.” Midlane is known for his excellent etchings and landscape paintings and it is clear that he has a strong passion for the textured Eastern Cape and Karoo landscapes.
His oil paintings are mainly of scenes from areas surrounding Grahamstown, such as Graaf-Reinet, Cradock
and Nieu Bethesda, sometimes incorporating the wildlife of these areas.
“The value and meaning of my work lies as a continuing experience of my environment,” he explains when talking about what his work means.
“What I come back to is man’s marks on the landscape. It’s about the roads and fences that continues to change.” The compulsion to paint how man affects the landscape is both an environmental and a social comment. As he puts it, “the original role of art was to serve a social function”.
He produces his art by allowing his paintings to develop on their own. As he describes it: “The intention is not for the original idea and image to be the same as the end product”.
When the Muse is silent, he enjoys drawing, and his favourite subjects are his dogs which keep him company in his studio.
Peter Midlane’s exhibition opened on the ground floor of Carinus Art School on Saturday evening and you are welcome to go and take a look and speak to the artist himself for the duration of the Festival.
