In Conversation with Josh Peters

“I wanted to paint the air in which the bridge, the house, the boat are — the beauty of the light in which they exist.” Claude Monet

Josh Peters’s work reflects a search for beauty within the natural world, but also within the everyday — something that has always been there, that has existed for millennia, yet still feels new because of the feeling he brings to it. Most painters inevitably project themselves onto what they paint; the canvas becomes a mirror of their interior world. In Peters’s work, there is an internal dialogue with the landscape. The land becomes a kind of stage through which he expresses his inner life — his ideas, his nostalgia, his quiet reflection on time passing.

His paintings evoke the sense that we are all on a long bus ride from childhood to old age, feeling along the way the pull of our younger selves, of memory, of places that remind us of who we were. The landscapes he paints are the opposite of the Ed Ruscha vision of the American city; instead, they turn back toward nature, to something older and more essential. They recall Walden, Thoreau, and Emerson, and that transcendental urge to return to nature in search of a deeper kind of fulfillment.

It is felt throughout his work — this painting of the past, of memory. It comes through most strongly in his depictions of Altadena, where the landscape no longer exists as it once did after the recent California wildfires. Yet something endures, preserved through paint. In that sense, these works become repositories of memory — holding what was once there, and what still remains within us.

Join us below in conversation with the artist.

What was your first experience creating “art”?

JOSH PETERS A lot of artists, people who become artists as adults, were always the artists in their school or in their class. But I wasn't like that. I was not a self-identified artist at all as a child. If anything, I thought that I didn't have any talent in drawing. It was when I was 17 that I took my first art class and made my first painting. It was the right time, the right teacher, the right time in my life, and I discovered that I had a talent for it. My teacher said some very complementary things about my work. I was, first of all, very influenced by his work. He was a very serious artist. He happened to be teaching in my high school because my high school offered him a free studio. 

Did you start at 17 with painting en plein air? 

JOSH PETERS No, not at all. I've been painting for almost 40 years. I was 17 when I made my first painting, and didn't start doing en plein air until maybe 3 years ago.

What drew you to en plein air? 

JOSH PETERS Years ago I had to move back to the East Coast for a year. I was going back and forth often and I didn't have a studio back east. That was where I grew up, in Massachusetts. I really loved the landscape, and it was amazing being there for the seasons, experiencing autumn for the first time in 20 years, and winter. I was spending time outside painting and I would bring the paintings back in my suitcase when I would come to Los Angeles for holidays to visit. And then I would work on the same painting here, with the California, Los Angeles landscape overlaid. I wasn't doing en plein air. It was these hybrid paintings. 

This watercolor on paper, painted en plein air, captures a quiet pond in Massachusetts. The same one where artist Josh Peters spent his childhood.

Have the fires changed your relationship with the outdoors? 

JOSH PETERS Certainly the landscape around here has changed. The paintings that I did in Altadena of the mountains. The landscape takes on a different feeling now. There is no record of the landscape. The landscape has changed, in a lot of cases, not destroyed, because nature always regenerates itself, but it's in a phase right now of starting over. 

Photograph of Altadena by Mark Abramson

You talk about nostalgia in your previous work. Does the feeling of nostalgia still show up in your work today? 

JOSH PETERS People say "paint what you love." I did a residency in Vermont so I was painting outside in Vermont all last summer. I was near a river and forest, and it was incredibly beautiful. A lot of my work is that love for my native landscape. I really feel it. There's a deep sense of, that's where I'm from. Los Angeles, when I first came out here, was the opposite of that, but it was exciting in a way. It was so exotic.

Do you finish your en plein air paintings on site, or do you come to the studio to refine them?

JOSH PETERS I would say 99% of the time I'm finishing them on site. It's almost a rule that I make for myself. A lot of times I look down at what I've done, the wind's blowing, the light's changing, it's full of shadow and sun. I'm like, “Well, okay, this one didn't work out.” And then I took it back into my studio and I realized that it really did work. There are very few cases where I make any adjustments in the studio. 

Do you plan your locations?

JOSH PETERS Part of working in the landscape, you find a spot that inspires you. So even when I was in Vermont, for example, I didn't paint for the first few days. I walked around and got familiar with the area. It took a while to find the spots that I knew would generate a lot of work and then I stayed at maybe three or four spots over the course of four weeks. It'll be a place with a view of the mountains, or certain trees that cast shadows at a certain time of day. 

Do you feel any connection to urban landscapes? 

JOSH PETERS I don't really feel a connection to the urban landscape. I enjoy that type of work, such as Jake Longstreth. Looking back 100 years, that's going to be what the world looked like, these big box stores.

Who inspires you past or present, alive today or deceased?

JOSH PETERS Cézanne and post-impressionist artists like Monet and Pissarro. Definitely Seurat’s charcoal drawings. Matisse for his color, always.

Josh's has two works available on our site – From the Garden at Mendocino (pictured) and Heard Pond, April