Peter Stichbury (artist)

Peter Stichbury, born Auckland 1969, is a New Zealand artist.

Stichbury graduated from the Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1997. He won New Zealand’s prestigious Wallace Art Awards the same year. Stichbury is primarily a painter but his body of work also spans the mediums of drawing, watercolour, sculpture and sound based work. Stichbury is most renowned for his intricate yet flat portraits of models and modern beauties sourced from contemporary media images. Stichbury often paints a generalised stereotype of a societal group, as opposed to the specific character study a traditional portrait painter seeks to achieve.

Combines startlingly attractive and awkwardly ugly

Beauty, models and media images

Non-conventional beauty: misfits, outsiders and intellectuals

Haute couture catwalk culture

Pared down 1950's aesthetic

Influences

Modern psychology and sociology, alien conspiracy theory, popular culture and historical painters including Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres and Lucian Freud.

English model Lily Donaldson is a favourite subject.