Peter Count, though born in New York City, grew up in rural upstate New York, near the Massachusetts border. Strewn along the New York-Massachusetts state line, New Lebanon, N.Y., with its mountain views wherever you look, continues to be homebase for Peter today — much as it was when his three children were growing up there in the house he designed to neatly fit a slight slope.
In an enclave a few minutes’ walk from the house sits a rambling shed — resolutely barn red to justify its historical title: The Barn — where Peter cleared some space and produced his (1980s-90s) charcoal-and-acrylic paintings.
In the early 2000s, when a neighboring post-industrial town began attracting attention, he converted a floor in a former factory into a studio much larger than he’d enjoyed in decades.
Enjoy the expansive room of his own he clearly did for several years, assembling the richly varied collage series only sampled on this website.
In closeup, the collage work often intrigues with artisanal emphasis on tactile detail – but, seen from a distance, explores perspective and chiaroscuro, among other painter’s classic inquiries.
Through the years, Peter Count has never hesitated to invite his pals and peers to come and see whatever work was in progress. Their comments have been equally welcome — but he was unlikely to reply in kind. His own thoughts about form, content, and the like, did find expression — in the work itself, but not in conversation or in writing. The Artist Statement that typically offers viewers a “frame” for understanding what an artist creates, is a convention Peter never has been tempted to adopt.
If his perennially untitled work has in effect spoken for itself, perhaps especially to other artists and to the art community in general, the vast (“World Wide") Web obviously calls for explicit communication. If anyone were to answer the call here, it would be Peter’s longtime friend and colleague, Evan Stoller.
A gifted architect and sculptor, also informed by decades of personal and professional complicity with Peter, Evan helps site visitors (re)discover here the artist and the art.
Peter’s paintings, with their consistent charcoal drawing theme, were exhibited in two New York City one-man shows in the 1980s-90s. Among acquisitions is the triptych purchased by Yoko Ono, herself a visual artist — to whom Peter Count's aesthetic must indeed have spoken. . . .
By the early 2000s, Peter had broken through the two-dimensional barrier with ultra-tactile, mixed media collages that came within sight of 3D. Shown publicly for the first time, here, on (re)Discover artist Peter Count, is a small selection of his available collages.
This brief biographical note must include mention of Peter’s brutal 2020 stroke that can’t bode well for new art initiatives. Yet, contends Evan Stoller, despite Peter’s previous experience of adversity — his third and last child, Dylan (1985-2009) lived with severe autism, and died suddenly and prematurely — tragedy has never been the lens Peter Count applied to his life. Evan, for his part, says he sees in his friend an image of "positive strength, experiment and discovery."
CREDITS
Studio materials "still life"