Peter Dykhuis
Recalibrations 2015 — 2024

January 6 — February 4, 2024
open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 12-6pm

Opening Reception: Friday, January 5th at 6pm
Artist Talk: Sunday, January 21st at 2pm

These paintings, mostly produced between 2015 and 2023, have been ‘rewritten’ with new coatings of black encaustic wax to redefine their silhouette and metaphoric power. Recurring critical themes and image sources in this body of work are:

• Checkered gameboards and competitive play as a metaphor of global politics;

• Military enterprises versus domestic economies;

• Missile ‘roll’ markings and air-force star insignias;

• Circular scopes that allude to surveillance and crosshairs;

• Weather satellite scrutiny as climate change becomes a reality.

• Personal worldviews and values in conflict with harsh, conservative, political realities.

Peter Dykhuis was born in London, Ontario. He is a former resident of Queen West in Toronto and is an internationally exhibiting visual artist and critical writer who, since 1991, lives and practices in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is the former Director/Curator of the Dalhousie Art Gallery (2007 – 2022) and, prior to that, Director of the Anna Leonowens Gallery at NSCAD University (1996 – 2007).

Dykhuis is also a founding director of HERMES in 2014 and has, since retirement from formal arts administration in 2022, happily focused on his studio practice and the promotion of HERMES as an artists’ collective.