Drawing on the Archie with Peter Lankas
"Drawing is the sustenance of any visual creative process, the quickest, most direct way to visualise feelings, thoughts, and perceptions, either to find a visual truth or personal poetry, to entertain and play.
It is a starting point for all my work as well as an independent process of discovery, experimentation, and pleasure.
For the last 10 years or more the iPad has become a major player in my drawing sketchbook arena, where I rely on it for a large of my initial as well as developmental process.
The iPad gives a quick versatility, easy to transport and to work in any style, concept and medium of choice, either drawn or painted.
My interest in portraiture has grown from conducting weekly life drawing sessions for 22 years, hence the focus on it via drawing and for the large part from life.
Investigating the portrait stretches all the senses, a total submersion in the moment to connect with and investigate the human landscape, to discover both the objective and the personal, to communicate a human narrative. The head becomes a subject, of both formal study and one of personal discovery within the process of drawing itself."
Peter is presented by Straitjacket Gallery.
Image: Peter Lankas Selfie (2023) © the artist
Drawing on the Archie by Peter Lankas is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Peter Lankas Biography
Peter Lankas was born in the Czech republic in 1957 coming to Australia in 1969. He studied art at Alexander Mackie and City Art institute 1978-80 and 84, where he completed a Diploma in Art and undertook professional Art studies in painting.
He worked professionally as an artist in Sydney, exhibiting at Union Street Gallery, Art Space and other Artist run spaces. He worked commercially completing mural work, and set designs for Sydney fashion shows, Grace Bros, the Sydney Dance Company, and private mural projects as well as graphics for SMH and designs for music posters and many other graphic ventures.
He took leave of his creative practice from 1987-97 to pursue spiritual concerns, returning to a full-time art practice in FNQ, Cairns where he started his fine art teaching career in Mossman an outreach of Cairns TAFE, tutoring painting and drawing.
In 2000 he moved to Newcastle where he found a teaching base at the Ron Hartree School of Art, where he taught until the school’s demise in 2005. Lankas has exhibited widely in Newcastle at the John Paynter Gallery, John Miller gallery, Gallery 139, the University Gallery, Art Systems Wickham and Newcastle Artspace in Parry street, where he had a studio from 2002-2014.
In 2005 he graduated from the University of Newcastle with an MFA in painting, where he tutored and lectured until 2005 when he took up a position as a painting and drawing tutor at Newcastle Art School, continuing his tenure there to this day. He conducts weekly private classes and workshops, currently residing at Hudson Street Hum, where he continues to run a life drawing session now in its twenty-second year.
Lankas is a committed painter who has held no fewer than 24 solo exhibitions since 2000, as well as countless group exhibitions, both in Sydney and Newcastle.
For the last 15 years has explored and works with the solvent free oil painting and paint making methods of the Old Masters as well as a continuing exploration with digital iPad drawing processes which he has incorporated into his daily arts practice.