Draft:Peter Stilton

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Peter Stilton (Nov. 13, 1944-Dec. 11, 2020) was an American artist known for paintings and mixed media works filled with intense, joyful energy and deeply steeped in themes from arts and cultural history. He produced "imaginary juxtapositions" of the familiar, historical and fantastic. Stilton used color and line to evoke what he called a "kaleidoscope" of feelings, while suggesting an animating energy beyond the surface.

His work defies easy categorization and is most often described in terms of emotional impact. Stilton's paintings have been called eclectic, whimsical, fanciful, full of surprises, working on several levels. It is also joyful, soulful, full of spiritual harmony, distillating happiness, and creates a sense of the infinite through color.

Stilton is best known for paintings depicting stylized objects from different European arts and eras. Growing out of his background, education and travels, his subjects range from Thomas Chippendale chairs, chandeliers, grand pianos and the Horses of Saint Mark in Venice to Paris facades, court face cards and more. The objects, especially Chippendale chairs, are stand-ins for people, drawing viewers into the scene. The figures mingle in gardens, rooms, courtyards or the beach; they play in waves or air. Both figures and background are in motion: they are familiar and fantasies, everywhere and nowhere.

His painting style was in general lyrical expressionism, but included impressionism, surrealism and unique abstracts. He constantly experimented with media and materials. Stilton worked in paper, canvas, wood and plexiglass. To create dynamic surfaces, he used watercolor, crayons, ink, pastels, acrylics, oils, metallic leaf, varnishes, resin, metals, rocks, fiber and photographic images, often combining and layering materials in the same works.

Raised in a family of artists, Stilton was never formally trained as an artist. He earned advanced degrees in Art History and Cinema. An affectionate familiarity with art history permeates his work, from Stilton's subjects to the first names he assigns to antique objects. Stilton evolved as an artist through his scrutiny of master artists and personal experiments. Klee was his favorite artist, Matisse nearly an ideal. He mentioned as influences Dufy for layering, Fragonard for interiors and Rembrandt for his brushwork and unity of the surface plane.

Stilton spent most of his career as an artist and art teacher in Tampa, FL. In later years, he also lived part-time in Maine.

In 1998, Stilton was the first American to receive a solo show at The Sorbonne in Paris. His work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in France, and is in private collections in Europe, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.

His paintings are in the permanent collections of the Office of the Mayor of Paris (Hotel de Ville, Paris), Office of the Mayor of Tampa, FL, Michele and Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts, Navy League of the United States (USS Typhoon), Raymond James Financial, Inc., St. Petersburg, FL, Florida Aquarium, Tampa, FL, Tampa General Hospital, Tampa, FL, and Yukyung Art Museum (part of Haegeumgang Theme Museum), Geoje, South Korea.

Early Life and Education

Stilton was born in Syracuse, New York as Peter Michael Slusarski. His parents, Peter Slusarski and Liz Fuller, were both artists in Alfred, New York. They put him in a painting class (his only one) at age 5. His father was a professor of ceramics and industrial design at Kent State University. Stilton grew up surrounded by books, art, museums and collectibles. An uncle collected Packard cars; his father was affiliated with the Henry Ford collection.

Stilton described his love of crafted objects as stemming from this time. The objects he selected for paintings, like the pieces in his home, were exemplars of design for their time. Placing them at the center of his works, he saw himself in some ways as “a custodian of eras in the past”.

His love of nature and water also dates from childhood, when he spent summers at a family home in Maine.

In his younger years Stilton painted only sporadically, although he sold his first painting in high school. His interest in art was mainly academic for several years. He graduated from Kent State University in 1966 with Honors and a BA in Fine Arts. Most of his coursework was in history, literature and philosophy. In 1968 Stilton received an MA in History of Art (specializing in Byzantine Art) from the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1972 he received an MS in Cinema and Film Education from the University of Southern California.

During his years in California, Stilton taught humanities and art history at various colleges, including California State University Long Beach (formerly College), California State University, Fresno (formerly College) and University of California, Los Angeles. Stilton recalled this period later as difficult because he did not have time to focus on creating art himself.

Career

In 1972 Stilton moved to Seneca Falls, NY for a teaching position at Eisenhower College. He was an instructor and assistant professor, coordinating the art and photography program when Eisenhower briefly became part of Rochester Institute of Technology.

For the first time, he taught painting and drawing to students. His course work led him to painting and drawing on his own. The beginning of his personal style dates from this time. In 1978 he was awarded a Fulbright Study Grant to Egypt.

Stilton met Jill Levin, his future wife, at Eisenhower in 1973. She was a student in one of his classes. The couple married in 1975. In 1982, they changed their last name to Stilton and moved to Tampa, Florida.

In Tampa, Stilton taught part time at Hillsborough Community College and St. Petersburg Junior College in Clearwater. He also did private tutoring.

During the late 1980s and 1990s he devoted more of his time to painting, exhibiting widely in the Tampa Bay area and beyond. Stilton was prolific, producing over 100 paintings in some years. He and his wife traveled regularly between Florida, Maine and Europe in the 1990s and early 2000s. All these locales, as well as his home full of collectibles and English garden, inspired his work.

In the mid-to-late 1990’s Stilton’s focus was on Paris, where he was invited to show his paintings. He had solo shows in 1995 and 1998 at Galerie Art et Communication (now Galerie Lise Cormery, which continues to display his works). He was the first American artist to present a solo show at The Sorbonne, University of Paris, in 1998.

During these years he also collaborated in the publication of two dual-language monographs: a compilation of his essays and poetry ("Peter Stilton Through Portals of Painting and Poetry") and an interview and comments on paintings (“L’ART et l’Adresse”) that included a critical appreciation by Charles Tanguy.

About 2000, Stilton began to produce abstract paintings. He also developed the horizontal and vertical grid that became an understory and design element in later paintings.

Stilton’s pace slowed from 2005-2015, when he taught elementary children in Tampa public schools. During this time his family adopted two young boys. He continued to experiment with images, media, materials and surface treatments, including photography and sculpture, for the rest of his life.

Stilton lived in Tampa for 40 years. Even when depicting Venice or Paris, his palette was mainly shaped by the light and colors of Florida. In 2014, Stilton and his wife bought a second home in Gouldsboro, Maine. His Maine residence led Stilton to create wood and multi-media works focusing on ships, light and waves, exploring the rhythms and colors of this region.

Stilton had over 50 solo exhibitions in California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina and Paris. His works have appeared in Florida, national and international publications, including The National Weather Center Biennale and online art books. He was also deeply involved with the Tampa Bay community, receiving local awards and donating works to the Carrollwood Cultural Center, Tampa Museum of Art, Tampa General Hospital, Florida Holocaust Museum, Florida Aquarium, Southeastern Guide Dogs (now Dogs Inc.) and other organizations.

Stilton on Painting

As an artist and art teacher, Stilton talked and wrote about painting in general and his painting in particular. He regarded art as reaching for a place beyond the material, to something spiritual and metaphysical. He saw the world in spiritual more than physical terms. At the same time, he wanted his work to convey the joy, liveliness and immediacy of experience. Stilton was not interested in exploring the dark side of life; like Matisse, he wanted to create beautiful, cheerful spaces for viewers.

Stilton wrote often about his effort to engage viewers. His unusual, humorous compositions were intended to introduce an element of "discovery", "surprise and delight", something for viewers "to play with and enjoy". He liked suggesting puzzles, sometimes deliberately leaving his scenes open to interpretation.

Stilton regarded colors and lines of form as the fundamental levels at which his paintings communicated. The narrative images were secondary. He wanted viewers to experience the emotions evoked via intense line and color. His constant experiments with surface treatments had the same goal: to amplify expressive content. Many Stilton paintings are textured, layered or extend their surfaces toward the viewer. His choices are always intended to intensify emotional depth and nuance.

An amateur musician and poet, Stilton considered art, music and poetry to be interchangeable, each inspiring the other and using similar techniques. He saw paintings in music and played music when painting. Rhythm, which Stilton created through line, repetition of elements and color, was particularly important to him; it is a distinctive feature of his work.

Stilton also considered viewer experience in his choices of color. His early works used a simple scheme of primary and secondary colors. This changed in the 1970s, when Stilton built theater sets at Eisenhower College. He observed that painted sets change form in different lighting: the only way to show sets consistently was to use a mix of all colors. Stilton translated this experience to paintings.

Stilton used what he called "prismatic color". His paintings contain all colors of the rainbow. When applying color, he overlaid each major color area with related, often complementary colors. The combination stabilized works in different light. It also amplified both major and complementary, making all colors more vibrant and the overall works harmonious.

Continually fascinated by changing light, Stilton also intentionally destabilized the color in some works. From the 1980's he began using reflective elements, like gold, silver and metallic leaf, that change color in different lights and times of day. The effect is to make the painting surface in part mutable, adding another dimension of exploration for the viewer.