Peter McRury (1992) is a Canadian artist living and working in Austin.
As a visual artist and digital designer, his practice centers around the rendering of digital imagery on canvas using an airbrush. While painting, he explores the nuanced digital textures, depths, and subtle imperfections of the subjects in his works, whether they be celebrities and characters from pop culture or nonsense digital scenes.
Hi Peter, it’s a pleasure chatting with you. Can you tell me a little bit about how a regular day look like for you?
My usual day involves fitting painting around my job, so I either paint before or after work. When I’m in the studio I’m usually listening to ambient and tranquil music or a dharma talk. These are helpful for me partly because they help me focus, but also because they help drown out the noise of my air compressor and ventilation fans.
When I’m not working or painting I’m usually spending time with my wife, dog and/or friends, or going out for long runs or swimming to clear my head.
Alright, so when did you first start out painting, and what are your motivations?
I was always a visual artist growing up, and I think that’s because my dad is a printmaker, so I was always surrounded by art supplies and pretty free to experiment with creative projects. I started painting as an undergraduate student when I was studying philosophy and cognitive systems, so I would sometimes paint the authors of the books I was reading–people like Richard Rorty, John Searle and Walt Whitman. Then, like a lot of young artists, I had a Francis Bacon phase and started making paintings with a lot of expression and movement. I sometimes cringe when I think about the the paintings I made while I was starting out, but I think that’s a pretty universal experience for artists and usually a good sign that there’s been some progress. Since then, my interests have gradually changed and I’ve sort of settled in to the style of painting I have now, but I’m always working to experiment with new ideas and refine my work.
And then at some point you start painting famous and iconic figures. Talk to me about that..
I started painting famous figures and athletes a couple of years ago when a friend of mine asked for a painting of Stephen A Smith, sort of as a joke. Shortly after that, I sold a few pieces to one of the owners of Ggiata Delicatessen in Los Angeles, who happened to be in New York where I was living at the time. I think when he picked them up he saw the Stephen A Smith painting and like the digital style. He and the other owners were in the process of opening a new location in West Hollywood and, since they’re from the East Coast originally, he reached out about a commissioned series of famous people or characters from New Jersey to hang in the new shop.
I’d always shied away from direct portrait painting but felt my practice had come along enough to try it, and it seemed like a good opportunity to get eyes on my work. After finishing those, I had more commission requests come in. I take those commissions when I can, since working on portraits is a nice subject-matter break from my usual visual references and it forces me to work slowly and technically in order to get the likeness right.
Can you tell me about your creative process, from beginning to end result?
My paintings always start with a sketch on the canvas, and then an initial layer of paint to try to capture general form and color. Once the first layer is done, I’ll photograph it, bring the photograph into photoshop and overlay it on my reference image with a lowered opacity so I can see where it’s different and where it’s the same. From there I make decisions about which discrepancies should be fixed in the next layer, and which ones should remain in the painting because they make it more interesting. I’ll usually repeat this process four or five times, but sometimes more. If I’m not painting a real person and the likeness doesn’t matter, I’ll often digitally collage new elements on to the photograph in order to update my reference image and take the painting in a new direction. I can get pretty obsessive with this process as new layers present new ideas to me, and many of my paintings have three or four distinct works beneath the final layer that don’t resemble the final layer at all.
I’m always super curious about this question. What song are you listening to the most right now?
Lately I’ve been trying to only listen to music that I don’t already know, so I’m not listening to any song twice. I’m just choosing genres I’m not as familiar with on NTS shows or mixtapes and listening to those. The reason I’m moving towards radio shows and away from Spotify is that Spotify got the hint that I like banjo music, and so would only ever recommend banjo music, and so for a long time that’s all I listened to and I got tired of it.
