Covering some info about my background in the arts, my studio and approach to photography and painting. Interesting was the question about why I choose to use a square format for a lot of my artworks.
The article is reproduced below:
In The Studio....
Photographer. Painter. Mixed Media/Sculptor. Traveler. Artist. Bruce Peebles cites Australia's natural environment as a constant source of inspiration - from the desert to the ocean. Often spending months traveling each year, Bruce has experienced the many wonders and contrasts that make up Australia today. Taking an abstractive approach with his photographs, Bruce's images are full of rhythms, colors, and motion. How Bruce Peebles came into his signature style was a process that is based on his artistic career as an advertising photographer and then developed through experimentation whilst traveling the rugged coastline of Western Australia. This resulted in his Seascape Series which he started in Black & White before progressing on to color along Australia's Southern and Eastern coastline. A trip to Europe and Asia ignited his interest in the man-made environment resulting in the Lightscapes Series, which captures the vivid beauty of the illuminated environment. The colors are bright and the movement creates a sense of action.
Bruce regularly exhibits at Art West Gallery and has a number of original artworks for sale on Bluethumb, Saatchi Art and Singulart. Taking influence from the Australian landscape and it's peoples, Bruce has produced a number of exciting paintings including 'Today Is Only One Day' which is a finalist in the John Villiers Outback Art Prize 2020. In Bruce's studio you'll find plenty of examples of his style. There's dual monitors and a large format printer for his photographs which he prints on archival Photo Rag paper and Artist Canvas. His paintings are acrylics on canvas and he makes his frames with Tasmanian Oak. "When making my art I search for elements, structure and places that intuitively fit into 'my reality'. Drawing inspiration from the texture and movement that my first marks make on the canvas, I pursue the character and story contained with-in". A lot of Bruce's work is a square format. Why? "A square is a perfectly balanced shape encouraging the eye to move around the frame in a circle. The square format is simplistic, there's less room so simplifying the composition becomes a necessity. However, simplifying the composition is much harder than it seems, the trick is to make the subject strong and eliminate as many distractions as possible. I like to centralize the subject for an effective composition and use the empty space around it to emphasize the shape. Negative space is very effective in the square format." Lately Bruce has been working on a series of mixed media reliefs using stainless wire, clay, strand and acrylic on board. You can follow Bruce on Instagram