The interview took place in the parking lot, outside the 20-20 Gallery in Sacramento. The gallery was filled with voices of artists explaining their works to a number of spectators. The senses were not solely stimulated by the variety of colors and texture, but the fruity taste of red and white wine, and the smell of seasoned pasta, rice, shrimp, cheese and olives. The air was pretty saturated and quite inviting.
Stan Peterson, a dynamic painter, began his talk on his adventurous life as an artist by reflecting on his youth. He spoke of South Dakota, the place of his birth. It is in South Dakota that he began his journey as an artist. He remembered his college freshman year as one of the most memorable. It was 1967-1968, and at that time, the University of South Dakota sat in a very conservative state.
The radical faculty at the university did not feel the need to practice what was considered politically correct. According to Stan, the professors engaged on what would be considered very controversial teaching methods. The methods drew a lot of attention ,but it wouldn’t last the year. Some of the professors were told to leave after one year. Nonetheless, Stan was fascinated by the whole experience, and it left a lasting mark on his psyche.
Stan explained that although the works at the 20-20 Gallery was realistic modern depiction of the world, he is an artist who often visits the unrealistic world of non-objective art. These are works of art he views separate from that which is considered abstract. Abstraction grows from reality he argued. Its birth and identity are still that of something real, but non-representational or non-objective arts grew out of being unrelated to material and real world. Its complexity lies in its intellectual limits. It creates paintings that shares no identity with a familiar form or color represented in the organic world. It cannot be governed by the rules of reality.
Stan defies categorical titles and labels that only seemed to stifle his mind, and he maneuvers himself through the realm of his creations by avoiding those limits. He argued that the evolution of the arts through the ages grew out of that which was new.
Today, however, Stan feels there is no truly new art, no new forms for many painters. They just recreate past works which play on the modern world, but Stan also feels that he is probably as unable to see what art will become, as painters a hundred years ago. Stan Peterson paint brush is evolutionary; it does not discriminate among art form. It incorporates all subjects; sometimes that subject can be represented and other times not.
