PETER THOMAS trained at Kingston-upon-Thames School of Art and then did an Art Teachers post-graduate course at Sussex University. He became Artist in Residence at Felsted School followed by a post as Head of the Art and Design Centre at Uppingham School.
In 1981 Peter stopped teaching, bought a cow shed in the Dordogne and began painting seriously. Peter has been there ever since and exhibits mostly in France, Spain, America and the UK. His pastels were shown during three different seasons at the Glyndebourne Festival and he has had work in the Grand Palais in Paris for a ‘Salon des Beaux Arts.’ Peter became a member of ‘La Société des Pastillistes de France’ in 2000 and the following year he was made a ‘Maître Pastelliste de France.’
More recently Peter has had a solo exhibition in the prestigious Galeria Haurie in Seville and was the ‘Invité d'honneur’ for the ‘Estivales Internationales du Pastel’ at the Abbaye de St-Florent-le-Vieil in 2009. Peter teaches
some master classes each year and was one of the main speakers in the first ‘European Congress for Pastel in Paris in 2008.
The beautiful landscape of the south-west of France has been a major inspiration for Peter’s work. Originally a watercolourist, he now uses pastels almost exclusively, working ‘en plein air’. He finds pastel the ideal medium for using outdoors, allowing him to work fast and achieve rich colours and textures and capture the fleeting effects of light, colour and season. He often revisits favourite subjects, not usually grandiose landscapes but often the small details of the French or English countryside - bales in a field, reflections in a pond or river, wildflower meadows or the corner of a garden.