Peter Stahr
Painting
My work
I like to work in large picture formats with acrylic or acrylic mixed media on canvas. This creates abstract images that are colorful and open to associations. With my pictures, I would like to invite all viewers on personal journeys of discovery to places of longing that arouse feelings and stimulate thought.
In my work I like to mix acrylic with different pigments, dispersions, pastes, earth and other materials. In addition to shape and color, the material is also used as a supporting medium. This results in multi-layered, detailed works with greater depth. My abstract landscapes often hover between the representational and the abstract.
About my work
Lisa Hendrich, M.A. - Director Museum Stadt Bad Hersfeld
"The City of Bad Hersfeld is delighted to present the exhibition SichtWeiten by the artist Peter Stahr in the premises of the Galerie im Stift from 22 September 2023 to 12 November 2023. This exhibition is a unique highlight in our gallery as it explores the fascinating world of abstract acrylic painting in the context of landscape depictions. Peter Stahr, an impressive artist in this field, has created with SichtWeiten a collection of works that vividly blur the boundaries between reality and abstraction.
Landscape painting has a long and venerable tradition in the art world, dating back to ancient panel and fresco painting. It has fired the imagination of artists for centuries and given us the opportunity to appreciate and value the beauty and diversity of nature in the world around us. But in the art of Peter Stahr, we experience an entirely new interpretation of this genre. His works invite us to see the world through different eyes and to look at familiar landscapes from an abstract perspective.
In Peter Stahr's paintings we discover a unique combination of shapes, colours and textures that create a dynamic and vivid landscape. In his acrylic paintings, the external world merges with
inner sensations, creating a bridge between reality and abstraction. Viewers are invited to immerse themselves in these captivating works, to lose themselves in the swirls of colour and lines, and to explore their own visual horizons.
and explore their own horizons.
The exhibition title also contains a fascinating play on words with the words "sight", "to see something" and "far", "to widen", to widen the view. It means breaking through the boundaries of one's own world, both geographically andgeographically and emotionally.
It is a longing that burns within us, a longing that yearns for the unknown and the distant.the unknown and the distant. Wanderlust is more than just the desire to travel to foreign places; it is a deep, inner urge that drives us to leave our comfort zone and explore the unknown.
It is the longing to experience new cultures, meet new people and discover the diversity of the world in all its facets. When we broaden our view, we open ourselves up and recognise something new in something that is already familiar.
Looking into the distance also allows us to see our own existence and our lives from a new perspective. We realise how small we are in this big universe and yet how much we still have to discover.
Wanderlust and the expansive view are therefore closely linked. They drive us to explore the world, gain new experiences and expand our emotional boundaries.
The SichtWeiten exhibition shows the journey of an artist who has courageously pushed the traditional boundaries of landscape painting. Here we see a unique symbiosis of nature and imagination, reminding us that art not only reflects, but also interprets and transforms.
Peter Stahr's works are an invitation to look at our world with open eyes. I would like to thank Peter Stahr for allowing us to participate in his creative process with SichtWeiten.
Enjoy an exhibition full of diverse perspectives and profound insights and let yourself be inspired by the possibilities of acrylic painting and the diversity of nature."
Charlotte Kowollik, Celle
"The color blue in all its nuances and numerous modes of action is the preferred color of the series of paintings Magic Landscapes. The light and color of the sea and the sky, painted from a wide variety of angles and with almost poetic flair. They are matter-of-fact, clear compositions of visualized memories of the artist's places of longing.
In his paintings he passes on these associative spaces to the viewer, bringing to life in him individual, long-buried emotions and memories.
These are pictures that reduce reality to a construction just before abstraction. Through his sensitive, differentiated painting style, as well as a subtle visual language, the painter creates an atmosphere in his works that signals to the viewer that these are inner images without compulsion for meaning, but with numerous possibilities for interpretation.
He likes to mix acrylic with different pigments, pastes, sand, earth or other materials, which creates a special depth effect that allows the viewer to look into infinite expanses. The play of brightness and shadow on the textured canvas changes color impressions and light temperature. The image appears more alive. These pictures caress the soul, carry off into other worlds, give impulses and fascinate.
In the picture series New Ways Peter Stahr also goes new ways in his painting.
It is about the artistic confrontation with new themes and painterly possibilities, and reflects and visualizes multilayered feelings such as future - or present fears, even feelings of loneliness. In the permanent interplay of colors, the constant struggle with the subject and the material to make the hidden visible becomes palpable.
It is a painting delicate in color, but dramatic in effect, through which even complex contents such as depth and movement are represented. The longer we look, the more we are animated to become creative ourselves, to let our own hidden feelings come alive in dialogue with the picture."
"The pictures correspond to the aesthetic horizons of several arts.
First of all, Turner appears with his boundless passion for the vastness of the sea and the adventures of the sky.
Then I hear Erich Fried whisper solicitously: "When a man comes to the sea / he should be silent".
Then the final chords of Smetana's Vltava plunge into the open lap of the sea.
And then this blue calm! Everything is there in everything - blue longing and distant feelings paired with the understanding certainty that there is no staying in staying. And always this calm, this understanding.
The blue of the images settles silently on the beaches of my metaphors:
"Now go to the sea and see the light in all colors and if the sky is willing then come back and kiss all my scars."