John T. Peterson Studio Fine Art
John T. Peterson Studio 
My work explores the fragile threshold between life and dissolution, memory and myth, presence and absence. Through mixed media painting, collage, found materials, and layered surfaces, I investigate decay not simply as decline, but as a transformative condition through which beauty, meaning, and spiritual resonance emerge.
I am drawn to the physical evidence of time: abrasion, fracture, repair, accumulation, and erosion. These marks function both formally and conceptually, reflecting the human effort to understand impermanence and to locate meaning within change. The surfaces I build often hold visible histories, allowing the material language of the work to mirror the emotional and existential realities that shape it.
Folklore and ancestral memory remain central to my practice. I often use deer, elk, and other symbolic animal forms as messengers between worlds — figures that suggest communication across the boundaries of the living and the dead, the material and the immaterial. In this way, my work develops as a series of visual myths shaped by grief, reverence, and a desire to recover the sense of wonder that contemporary life so often obscures.
Ultimately, I am interested in how images can hold contradiction: fragility and strength, beauty and decay, mourning and continuity. My work invites viewers into a contemplative space where these tensions remain unresolved, yet meaningfully present.
John Peterson is a mixed media artist based in Los Angeles, California. He received his undergraduate training at the Art Institute of Southern California and attended the MFA program at the Claremont Graduate School of Art. His work investigates themes of mortality, transformation, memory, and the symbolic relationship between the natural world and spiritual belief systems.
Working with painting, collage, found materials, and layered surfaces, Peterson creates images that embrace impermanence as both subject and method. His practice is informed by folklore, ancestral memory, and a sustained interest in the ways symbolic forms can mediate between the visible world and the unseen. Deer, elk, and other animal figures appear frequently in his work as messengers and carriers of knowledge, linking contemporary experience to older mythic structures.
Peterson’s work has developed from early explorations of decay and imperfection into a more deeply personal meditation on loss, passage, and the endurance of meaning. Across his body of work, he constructs what he describes as visual myths: images that honor the instability of life while seeking resonance, continuity, and transcendence within it.
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December 11, 2024
Tree Stories Tree Stories” a group show at the Sasse Museum of Art, Pomona California, December 2024 Link to the show and …
Melancholy – 2024 | Group Exhibition
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January 18, 2024
Melancholy – 2024 | Group Exhibition Group Exhibition Duration: From 25-Dec-2023 To 25-Feb-2024 Organizer: Gallerium Venue: Biafarin Online Exhibition Melancholy – 2024 …
Signs and Symbols 2024 | Group Exhibition
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January 18, 2024
Signs and Symbols 2024 Group Exhibition Duration: From 10-Jan-2024 To 10-Mar-2024 Organizer: Gallerium Signs and Symbols – 2024 | John Peterson Signs …
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January 18, 2024
Influx Gallery interview 1. Welcome John to The Influx Gallery family. Tell us a little bit about yourself and where you are …
