One of the UK’s most exciting and innovative contemporary artists will be exhibiting at The Watermill Gallery in Aberfeldy this autumn. Peter Joyce’s exhibition ‘New Landscapes’ will be on show at Scotland’s newest arts venue from 1st September to 29th October. The exhibition will highlight the landscapes and natural environment of Dorset, where the artist now lives.

A keen walker, many of Joyce’s paintings are named after actual walks, and focus on the physical land itself, its detail and its earth-bound qualities. His paintings are for the most part abstract in nature, and over many years he has invented a symbolic language which stands for land forms and shapes.

Much of his work is based on the landscape of the Isle of Purbeck, about which he says, "The hills and valleys through the varying seasons and in different weathers become an enormous and inexhaustible riddle of pattern and texture, the constantly changing relationships of these stony shapes, patterns and textures expose themselves as one walks the hills. This antiquity and geology with the spectrum of earth colours under the changing light is the landscape experience for which my art has developed such a strong relationship."

"I believe an artist should always seek to achieve the unexpected and my paintings evolve with an unpredictability, with an experimental curiosity and with spontaneity. I have a natural tendency to structure and order which I try to counter with impulse."

Peter was born in 1964 and lives in Poole, Dorset. He gained a BA (Hons) Degree in Fine Art at Stourbridge College of Technology & Art in 1985. Since then he has exhibited widely and his work has been bought by large numbers of private collectors. It is also to be found in many corporate collections such as: Lloyds/T.S.B.Group, National Westminster Bank, Reuters, Binder Hamlyn, Bank of China, and Hill Samuel.

Kevin Ramage, owner of The Watermill said, “Much of Peter's work is derived from walks near his home in Dorset in southern England. However the influences in his work - of dramatic land and seascapes, and the convergence between sky, land and water - give a feeling that will be familiar to anyone who has walked the Scottish hills. I have been a huge admirer of Peter’s work for a long time, and I am therefore delighted that The Watermill has been chosen as the first venue in Scotland to showcase his work”.