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Peter Layzell

@peterlayzellpainter

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One time Royal Academy Summer Exhibition Prize-Winner, Exhibitor NPG BP Portrait award, New Light 2018, 2020.Represented by Portal Painters.

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I have used notebooks alongside painting since I was a student. This clip is a quick-flick through one of my recent ones. I tend to work in them after a day’s painting. They’re from a range of sources, consisting mainly of human interaction. The drawings here are from my mind’s eye,news,faces from podcasts,stills from films, sections of paintings. They’re not really explicitly functional; curiosity is the starting point.

The music is from my brother Paul’s recent album ‘Before we Die’. As the title suggests,It explores aspects of our mortality . I cannot recommend it too highly.
#notebooks#humaninteraction#drawing#beforewedie by @peterlayzellpainter

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a month ago

‘The Gift’ began as a small drawing among others, testing out some of the connections between circles,horizontals verticals and ratios and applied to an imagined building, where the inside is visible.Three months later and the painting is finished and ready for the British Art Fair, September 24th - 27th with @portalpainters .Many thanks to @gallerymore for always getting the paintings at the last minute, and being able to frame them so beautifully and within the deadline! #colour#narrative#geometry#architecture by @peterlayzellpainter

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a month ago

Had a great conversation with my 87 year old mum last night including how she met her future in laws, and what they were like.

So here’s my beloved grandad Les in 1950, hard at work in a job he hated. He was the family’s third-generation compositor—a tradition started by his grandfather William, who was indentured for a seven-year apprenticeship in 1860.

For working class people at the time, working as a compositor was a well paid and comfortable number compared with say , working in mining, at a mill or in heavy engineering. Les’s father would have been delighted to have secured an apprenticeship for him.
Les, however, always wanted to be an artist, not spend fifty years in a print factory. I once visited him at the factory shortly before he left work for good.It was noisy and smelled of ink, and he couldn’t wait to get on with his retirement.

Mum told me that she first met him in the summer of 1959. It was doubly good for him, as he was on a six week strike and the summer was long and hot. It was the year of ‘You’ve never had it so good’, which was partially true for both my dad and grandad.

The second picture is mum and dad in 1959, both having just turned twenty.

The third picture is grandad goofing about on my dad’s new Triumph Tiger cub, again during that strike in the summer.#conversations#workingclasshistory#thenandnow by @peterlayzellpainter

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2 months ago

WIP- a new portrait(detail).

The art of painting is also the art of noticing. You try and notice things and point them out to other people. Whether they notice things you want them to is another matter.
The body’s construction is part of this; much more challenging in a younger person where underlying structures are more difficult to read.

From a technical perspective, my multilayered, intensely realized paintings are usually much smaller, so this large format (67cm x 100cm)is a new challenge for me .

The only alternative to change is stagnation, so every painting (at least in my eyes) attempts to do something I’ve not attempted before.#painting#memory#reflection#registering#allthingsmustpass by @peterlayzellpainter

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3 months ago

Summer 1990 and summer 2026. Hair gone, glasses on, a few pounds up ;but still painting heads, hands and feet and putting them on a wall. #stillpainting#stillsmiling#royalacademysummerexhibition#wayfarers#failbetter by @peterlayzellpainter

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3 months ago

Thanks to everyone - organisers, logicians, artists and collectors - who have made the wayfarers art fair happen. For me ,it was an opportunity to assemble all remaining paintings in the boardroom baroque series, including some that had never been exhibited before.
The space is magnificent and combines sculptures,paintings,photographs,and textiles. I’ve put some of my favourites above. Shoutout to Brian Lewis who attended Southport art college in the 1950s and has been making work for over 60 years - it was good to see his paintings a sculptures together. Shoutout too to James and Alexis who helped me transport the paintings and Deb @gallerymore for helping me hang them.
Some great conversations with other artists I’d met recently at the Sefton Open.
The fair continues tomorrow- it will be good to see you.#wayfarersarcade#wayfarersartfair#southport#artinyourcommunity by @peterlayzellpainter

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3 months ago

Thank you @theatkinsonsouthport for awarding ‘night-shift’ this award at the Sefton Open. It’s really appreciated and encouraging!I have a connection with the Atkinson: I was artist in residence there in 2008 ;I live nearby, so it’s a valuable resource for me that I can just drop in on. It is so important artists - and everyone else- support these unique spaces that are always under threat from philistines and bean counters. It’s a marvellous Victorian Gallery that is well adapted to display historical and contemporary work.
“The Atkinson has almost three thousand works of art dating from the 17th to the 21st centuries. The collection includes a very fine group of 18th century portraits and many artists’ self-portraits including examples by John Bratby and Christian Seybold.
Highlights of the 20th century collection include several paintings by Walter Sickert and fellow members of the Camden Town School such as Charles Ginner as well as paintings by Scottish Colourists, namely Arthur Melville, JD Fergusson and Samuel Peploe. Key works from World War I include a painting of a mounted trooper by Alfred Munnings and a battle scarred landscape by Paul Nash. The collection of 20th century British sculpture is small but very high quality and includes good examples by Henry Moore, Elisabeth Frink and Jacob Epstein.
There are numerous important watercolours and oils by major British artists including Sargent, Steer, Landseer, BW Leader, John Sell Cotman and William Henry Hunt, as well as a significant collection of marine and coastal paintings. Northern artists are very well represented with good examples by LS Lowry, Theodore Major and Harry Rutherford as well work by Liverpool artists such as Arthur Dooley, Nicholas Horsfield and Adrian Henri.
Unusually for a Northern municipal collection there are many Continental works of art including a painting by the French Salon painter Rosa Bonheur, an early large-scale allegory by Nicolas Loir and a Dutch townscape by Willem Koekkoek.” #theatkinsonsouthport#theseftonopen#useitorloseit by @peterlayzellpainter

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5 months ago

I made ‘Fathers and Sons’ in 2009 as a kind of snapshot of where I was in my life and in my family. Me, my son, my father and my grandfather are in my painting, in varying modes of depiction- photos, mirror, ‘real’ life. The earlier post of Immy as a child is a companion piece to this one, which had a largely female cast, whereas is this is predominantly male. It was in the National Portrait Gallery portrait annual exhibition award in 2010, with great work by Michael Gaskell - a student in the same year as me at college- and @crossfleet whose marvellous self portrait had (I think) affinities with mine, with its strong sense of then and now. Where does the time go? At least as a painter you can arrest and fix a moment before it rushes by.#portrait#selfportrait#thenandnow#fathersandsons by @peterlayzellpainter

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6 months ago

WIP- a portrait.
I first painted our niece Immy in around 2011, and wanted to register her child like wonder at the world as well as a developing self consciousness. The attributes around also her signify her importance in the family. Her sister , Sadie is reflected in the mirror- so it’s a double portrait.Scroll forward to 2026 and I am painting her (in another double portrait) as an 18 year old woman, with the strength and energy to complete a handstand with ease. This allows me to develop a conceit in painting; that the representation of a few seconds of activity can take many weeks or months to complete, though it should still look like ‘a moment’. Jo is also in the picture. I originally wanted to paint them separately, but together they seem to intensify each other’s character . (I had painted Jo as she finished her career in nursing - this is in my previous post). 15 years also mark a change in the way I work, with the confidence to do large, fast canvases I didn’t have before.
I have included a couple of preparatory drawings which help me work out technical issues. I don’t copy the drawings; they help me to identify issues I need to be aware of. There is still a fair bit to do, but the idiom should reflect the subject, so it is not likely to be ‘detailed’ like the earlier portrait , though I want to maintain the discipline of creating a likeness.#portrait#painting#thehumancondition by @peterlayzellpainter

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6 months ago

It was good to visit the @atkinsongallery yesterday in Southport with @jojoflowermilady and speak to some visitors. I have three paintings in the Sefton Open exhibition. Lots of really good work. I admired @oskalappinartist painting last year and this year her Sugar Magnolia vessel this year. Great work!
Margaret Young’s large scale figure paintings from life in watercolour; Sam Cookson’s meticulously constructed sculptures with a strongly personal mythology, and other really strong works by painters and sculptors including Jess Woolston, Alan Jones, Anthony Coulthurst, Taya Nielsen, John Edwards.
I believe strongly in participating in exhibitions where you live and supporting your community where you can. It’s (arguably)as important to get out and show your work, and discuss it with other people as it is to make it#seftonopen#atkinsonartgallery#keeppublicgalleriesalivewithlivingartists. by @peterlayzellpainter

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6 months ago

Been getting to grips with a big new studio space that allows me to put some of my work out, large and small. It’s great to have a bit of room.I paint by day and come home and draw at night; the shed has been set aside for reading and drawing (image 3). As I was sorting out my sketchbooks, I came across this drawing I’d forgotten about from 2010. It seemed like a message from then to now. I had my alter-ego explain it to an old man in this street scene.
.#studiospace#reflections#notebooksanddiaries by @peterlayzellpainter

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6 months ago

I’ve painted a number of ties and suits recently, and whenever I do, I think of my friend and mentor Alan Dyer who died last spring.
I first met Alan in 1981 , and shared a studio with him in the mid 80s. By then, I’d visited his small flat which contained a number of his small paintings he’d made in the late 60s/early 70s , including this one that he very generously gave to me, recognising my enthusiasm for it. It was one of a series depicting working class life from ‘posed’ photographs - weddings, football teams, people in front of(very British) advertising hoardings.Alan was part of a post war boom in Higher Education. For the first time in Britain, working class people attended universities and art schools in large numbers( and with generous government grants), reshaping the institutions and the kind of work made there. Alan was a genuine working class intellectual: a cobbler at 15, a university lecturer at the age of 29.
Alan’s figures wear their Sunday best, but mischief seeps through, such as in the laughing man in this painting. Alan loved painting and always showed an interest in what I was painting ; his worked changed, but the archetypes from his early paintings persisted, complete with ties and demob suits.The faces often look a little like him.
Spool forward to 2026 and my friend @jamie_holman_studio shares Alan’s interest in working class life and history, posed family photographs, and the sense that art should be more than interior decoration or personal therapy .The striking presence of the balaclava is unforgettable, with all its associations and dissonance in a happy family ‘arrangement’. It’s kind of booby trapped.
Getting older is a mixture of joys and sorrows. Sorrow at losing people you have loved, joys at seeing new, inventive work with connections to the work you have loved and thought about your whole life.
Seeing Jamie’s work at the @jmpaintingprize is a must. Go this weekend before it closes!#alandyer#jamieholman#johnmoorespaintingprize. by @peterlayzellpainter

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8 months ago