First Place: Landscape
Winter Afterglow, oil/linen, 30x40
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Finalist: Landscape
Lone Pine, Winter, oil/linen, 24x30
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Finalist: Landscape
Summer Meadow, oil/linen, 24x30
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Finalist: Landscape
Winter Afterglow, oil/linen, 24x30
Sold

The Artist's Magazine
December 2007

First Place & Finalist for Landscape
The Artist's Magazine 2007 Annual Competiton

PETER FIORE turned to fine art less than a decade ago, after working in illustration for 30 years. “I got tired of it—I was doing the same things over and over and I wanted to do more work for me,” he says. The icy blue field and sunlit barn depicted in End of Winter attracted Fiore’s eye. “I’ve passed this site for years. In fact, in the summer you can’t even see the barn, but in winter things are simpler; the bare bones show more. One March day the field in the foreground was still covered in snow because of the tree’s long shadows. That contrast—the shadows and the warm sunlit field behind—intrigued me.” After snapping some photographs, he retired to his studio near Matamoras, Pennsylvania.

Fiore points out that a photograph is a good starting point but “in a painting you make it visual, tactile, sensuous.” He works on Claessens double-primed linen mounted to half-inch plywood using Beva 371, an archival and reversible adhesive. “It’s a mylar sheet that you iron in place. I was tired of things poking through the canvas and I like a hard surface. I use a palette knife to give a crisp edge, like the one along the left side of the barn. I also use a palette knife to scrape parts away and paint back into those areas, a procedure that results in a transparent effect. In addition, I like to build up the surface with a lot of glazing and scumbling, as you can see in the foreground. I finally added those light patches on the snow for some articulation.”

A longtime teacher and workshop instructor, Fiore can easily elucidate his painting process and its technical aspects, yet he has the heart of a poet. “The ground has its own perfume when spring is coming,” he muses. “You become attuned to it when you live in a rural area. All my paintings are about that time of day, that moment, that feeling. I like visiting a motif over and over again. Working the way I do—painting the scenes I’m drawn to—goes deeper, transcending the ‘pretty picture.’ What could be richer?”

--Deborah Secor for The Artist's Magazine

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"Refreshing color. A painter's eye was there. I was engaged by the blue foreground, the golden-lit focal area with the red barn. This is a painterly work."

-- Patricia Tobacco Forester, Landscape Judge

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