Today we’d like to introduce you to Cullen Peck.
Hi Cullen, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I grew up in Atlanta but moved to New York for college. I started studying painting at New York University and ended up finishing my degree in Florence, Italy at one of the school’s satellite campuses. Though visual art was not my first love — I had gone to school to study creative writing — I was drawn to the Rennaissance methods of drawing and painting and ended up pursuing a second degree at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, where I focused on contemporary portraiture. After school, however, my other passion took over: I had worked as a cook in restaurants around Florence to support myself, and in that time, I found I had a knack for the restaurant industry. Over the next six years, I painted very little, honing, instead, my skills as a line cook, bread baker, restaurant owner, and new parent of two. I met my spouse in the industry, and together we ran a couple of restaurants and coffee bars before deciding to move back across the pond. We ended up picking coastal Georgia because of my family connections to the area and its promise as a good spot to start a new restaurant venture.
As soon as we arrived, the pandemic swept the world; opening a new restaurant became an idea akin to financial suicide. As we waited and fretted about the future, I began to paint again, and picking up those brushes was like lighting a match in a drought-parched field; I made painting after painting as if making up for lost time. My children, in particular, energized as they were by the freedom of an endless marsh sky, inspired my work, and fueled it.
I feel so fortunate to have made a name for myself here in the area in so little time — the art community here pulled me in and encouraged me, offering me my first solo exhibition little over a year after I arrived back in the US, and the opportunities since have humbled me and motivated me to continue pursuing my voice and my craft.
We all face challenges, but looking back, would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Is any road smooth? Should it be? I think, perhaps, that a creative voice that lacks adversity in its development lacks fundamental depth. As a student, I thought myself talented but not talented enough. When I left school and quit painting, I told myself that it was because I made a better chef than painter, but ultimately, I was caving to a fear of failure that I allowed to rob me of years of time I could have spent doing more of what I love. It goes without saying, too, that as a female artist, it can be immensely difficult to make space for both motherhood and a creative career. In a male-dominated field like contemporary art, the needs of small children can mean less time for making connections and producing volume in a body of work, both of which mean fewer opportunities. Socially, we expect mothers to funnel their creative energy into developing the young minds they have brought into the world, and it can feel a bit like an act of treason to withhold some of that energy for ourselves and our own development.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I am a contemporary figurative painter. My work is recognizable for an almost documentary-style depictions of daily life, particularly childhood, using usual color combinations. Painting styles range from translucent acrylic washes on paper to large-scale works on canvas. I strive to explore the intersection of memory and reality in the way we relive our own childhoods through those of our children. When we see a child riding her bike through a street puddle, I tend to think we see both the actual child before us and ourselves, in some different place, in some other puddle. The image and memory overlap and are colored by the surreal filter of imagination, and that experience is what I most want to recreate. I am proud of my own growth as an artist in recent years and the ability of my work to connect people to their own experiences: nothing makes me happier than when a person stops before one of my paintings and says, “Gosh, that reminds me of…” My work, I think, is strongest for its ability to connect with its viewer.
What matters most to you?
Human connection drives me, both as a person and as an artist. I am fascinated by how we connect with others and how those relationships shape us. People are complex and fascinating, and too often in the world today, we remain trapped in concern for what makes us different, what renders us incompatible; I don’t believe there is a single person in this world with whom we cannot each find common ground, with whom we cannot share a moment of joy. I don’t think that those connections free us, of course, from continuing the fight for human rights, for better environmental policy, for access to basic needs and services for people of all means: I mean only that we need not sacrifice entirely our own humanity and that of others in order to attain our goals.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.cullenpeck.com
- Instagram: @cpeck.studio
