Lamar Peterson

Fredericks & Freiser is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Lamar Peterson.  For over 15 years, Peterson has painted a wide range of subjects from cartoon landscapes populated by African American suburbanites to surreal portraits of Michael Jackson. The artist has collaged tatters into representations of faces and employed colorful party streamers as framing devices.  Within all his various constructions, Peterson continually evokes a transformation or disfiguration as he depicts young African American men and women in our current culture.

In A Self-Portrait, Peterson presents a group of work that combine to reflect a persistent state of turmoil in the artist’s mind over the past two years. While each work is slightly different in style, they accumulate to become a single metaphor for black male identity in today’s world.  Peterson strikes an elegiac tone in several works in which flower vases flank representations of young black men, one of whom has just been stung by a bee.  Black outlining is also prevalent.  Though here, it serves to interrupt rather than further the narrative structure. Other works are quasi-abstract; while still figurative, their simplified forms are pared down to raw emotion suggesting elements of strength, violence, and vulnerability.