Peter Stichbury New Zealand, b. 1969

Peter Stichbury has established his own world and established his presence in the United States and Oceania, working on portraits featuring specific storylines and meticulous portrayals of characters. Based on documents, chapters from his elaborate, exhaustively researched case studies are characterized by clear character descriptions, such as traditional portraits, and he visualizes the tension and identity of the objects in storylines by giving narratives to individual characters.

Peter Stichbury has been grappling with this subject, his fascination sparked by an experience in childhood of an object he could not identify moving slowly across the midday sky above him and has firmly established UFO as the current thematic focus of his practice. Rigorously researching media data, declassified government documents from several nations, academic reports and video footage of UFO, Peter Stichbury analyses and pays particular attention to the materials especially related to individuals in their 20s and early 30s. He believes that people of this age group can have unbiased views on certain absurd occurrences since they are still at the premature stage in terms of mentality. The depiction style that restrains each person's individuality as much as possible is a visual metaphor that represents the loss of emotion about the firm truth that has usually been believed. In his recent works, Stichbury reconstructs a portrait of a related Greek mythical figure by observing and realizing consciousness. The palely bright skin tone and the delicate, fascinating facial depiction of the character give the work an aesthetic completeness.

Peter Stichbury lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand. He received a BFA and MA in Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1997. He won the prestigious New Zealand art prize the Wallace Art Award in the same year. He has participated in exhibitions at the Dowse Art Museum (2022), The FLAG Art Foundation (2022), Nevada Museum of Art (2016) and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (2013) in New Zealand. His work is represented in the collections of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery, Christchurch Art Gallery, and Wallace Arts Trust in New Zealand.