Peter Heij

Peter Heij, (born Utrecht, The Netherlands, lives in the Auvergne, France) attended the Royal Academy for Art and Design (AKV | St. Joost) at Den Bosch from 1982 to 1987, specialized in painting. After his academic period, he continued primarily in realism, practiced from his youth and enriched with his academy experiences. The themes and subjects of his work deal with people and the impact of their surroundings on their identities, particularly in the Figures (Gestalten) series. Others endeavour to reconstruct landscapes of the past (the Lostland paintings) or attempt to capture the shapes of the ephemeral (the Skyscapes). A more recent group of works reveals the traces made on a landscape by its inhabitants (Santa Fe footpaths). 
In the Photo paintworks, the realistic images of photographs become enmeshed with painting and other techniques. The captured and unmoving reality is thereby changed, questioned, and placed into a different perspective.

Peter works currently at a collection of sketches of faces from memory (Faces) and newer series of portraits and faces.

The experience of new and changed insights and awareness through elevation above and distance from everyday reality, never completely losing sight of that reality, stands central in his work.

The submitted work; Unfinished men / Hommes inachevés (oil on canvas) is finished as to be unfinished, it is frozen in a moment of development.