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Peter Cartwright Paintings 1997 – 2005 27 August – 30 October 2005 Kitchendevilstudio, 175 x 203 cm, oil on canvas, 1998 1939 Born Derby, England 1956 – 58 Derby College of Art 1958 – 61 Royal College of Art Until 1996 Senior lecturer in Fine Art, Nottingham Trent University Currently lives and works in Southwell, England. Three-times John Moores exhibitor Peter Cartwright has exhibited paintings throughout the UK since the early 1960s and he is represented in the Art’s Council of Great Britain’s collection. Through extensive reading of art theory and philosophy texts Cartwright has sought over the years to understand his long-held conviction of the significance of painting. For him, Wait/Deposit, 179 x 179 cm, 2003 painting through its material limitations, its flatness and objectness, can have a materiality that is transformational. ‘I am concerned with the presence a painting has in its material sense, with its objectness,’ he says. ‘I am not concerned with any literal readings of a work … [rather with] that part which is essentially about "being".' In more recent remarks about his current work, Cartwright talks about the conditions that spark off strands of thought and visual ideas. He describes making for himself a type of ‘ground’, a place from where he can begin to paint. Here he might have accumulated his experiences of, for example, a morning’s walk – that pale-violet plastic fork, accumulated muck by a wall, a dead blackbird on the road. These items he impulsively notes down in a sketchbook or on the back of an envelope. All the work in this exhibition has been produced since Cartwright retired from teaching, in 1996, and none has been shown in a gallery before. As such, the show itself is a rare opportunity to view an entirely new body of work. The paintings themselves are large in scale and generous with colour; the smell of oil paint is pungent. Cartwright is painting with vigour and commitment, and the work he is producing is significant.