Peter van Straten Art by Peter van Straten

Experiments in bliss

Keeping wide the range of image types is important to me when busy on a body of work – we all do what we must to keep our jobs interesting. I try (though it is impossible) to do justice to the staggering breadth of our experience, from flippant hilarity to unflinching melancholy, and ranging the mode of expression from finicky application to splashing the paint about. I also need to be making images I don’t really understand, so that I don’t just feel like a robot obeying the preconceived notions of my busy mind and Germanic work-ethic. I cannot live without mystery, and live instead in the hope of occasional spiritual orgasm.