'Sirens' by Cleon Peterson, 2021
26 x 32 Inches
66 x 81.3 Centimeters
Hand-pulled red and black screen print on 290gsm Coventry Rag fine art paper with deckled edges.
Limited Edition of 125 (#88/125)
Signed, dated and numbered by the artist.

ARTIST BIO

Cleon Peterson was born in Seattle in 1973. That’s perhaps where the boring bit begins and ends. Raised in an open, intellectual and creative family (it was the ’70s after all), young Cleon rode skateboards and read comic books in between home-school assignments from his grandfather.

Unfortunately, this was also a time of personal strife for Cleon, who was wrestling with drug addiction, a diagnosis of mental illness and a severe asthmatic condition causing him to be deathly allergic to oil paint (and cats).

He has made the incredible journey of overcoming these impossible obstacles and is thriving, using his past experiences to inform and develop his amazing talent for design and art.

Peterson went on to receive a BFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Detroit. He currently lives in Los Angeles with his wife and kids. When he’s not painting in his studio, he works as a freelance graphic designer. Peterson has shown at New Image Art in Los Angeles, Alice Gallery in Brussels, Lazarides in London, Joshua Liner Gallery and Deitch Projects in New York.

Peterson’s paintings portray only slightly ironic nightmares born from years of personal struggle, street violence and ultimate survival. There is no escape from Cleon Peterson’s work and his exorcised demons, which sometimes wear uniforms or just underpants. His narrative is dark and uncomfortable, a car wreck you can’t look away from. The canvases provide a catharsis for the painter and, depending on individual experience, his audience.

Peterson’s street fighters remind us there are sinister, very personal ways to die by knife, stick, fist or claw. Rarely will you see a gun. This is absurd, graphic violation in spot color—the flat fields of red, black and white contribute to the anxiety, the rawness and the inescapability of the static chaos in his compositions.

The faceless, generic violence that Peterson depicts is at its most frightening in that it lends itself to any neighborhood, any ethnicity, any gender. Anyone in Anytown, USA. It’s Dante’s Inferno depicted for a modern age. Heavily influenced by comic masters Dan Clowes, Charles Burns and Robert Crumb, as well as his own unwavering ability to design the hell out of a blank page, Peterson’s quality of line and perspective drawing is flawless. He provides beautifully rendered street corners at alternative angles and battlefields viewed from above for his imaginary urban territories, even if the society he’s depicting is massively askew.
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Good (See Photos)

32 in