Artists on Art Magazine
Thame Museum poster for Peregrine Heathcote show
American Art Collector – May, 2015
Peregrine Heathcote will exhibit in the show The World is Ever Near at The Falcon Gallery. Among his paintings are Let Your Dreams Set Sail…and Where the Wind Blows. In the latter, “The gentleman is about to get a fix on position with the compass, a vintage one given to me at Christmas by my eldest son, Harry, to use as a prop for the painting,” says Heathcote.
“He is wearing Persol sunglasses, and the clothes are inspired by Daniel Craig in Casino Royale…The lady is wearing a vintage Helene dress…” The island in the background is from the artist’s “favorite place of all,” San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. Heathcote is working with filmmaker Dagmar Scheibenreif on a video that brings to life his characters, while featuring the artist and his paintings in Hitchcock-type appearances.
For more information click here.
Vintage Video
American Art Collector – December, 2014
“The past can seem like a stage set, another world, an alternative existence. I love that unobtainable historical magic,” painter Peregrine Heathcote says of the inspiration for his nostalgic works of planes, trains and automobiles. His paintings take place in the 1930s and ’40s, when design and innovation were the playgrounds of the imagination. This .is the era of the Tucker, the Spruce Goose, of Art Deco, of luxury of the highest caliber. These subjects and others will appear in New Work:
Peregrine Heathcote opening December 27 at Bonner David Galleries in Scottsdale, Arizona.
American Art Collector – January, 2012
In his latest oil paintings on exhibit at Bonner David Galleries, British artist Peregrine Heathcote explores and develops narratives concerning relationships and personal journeys through a classic Cinecolor palette.
The show’s title, The Path to Enlightenment, was inspired by a magazine article about The Oprah Winfrey Show’s final curtain call after 25 years and how it helped so many people to “search for enlightenment.”
Peregrine in Webneel
Peregrine Heathcote was the youngest ever student of Heatherly College of Art in London. Aged just 8, he attended holiday classes in printmaking and nude drawing. On his return to the Berkshire prep school he regaled his fellow class mates with the stories of his holiday experiences. When he saw their faces, his chest filled with bravura as his recounted drawing a beautiful naked girl on an old mattress. Son of an Antiques dealer specializing in militaria, he was brought up in a house by the Thames crammed fill with uniforms in glass cases, swords, canons and relics from various historic sea and land battles, more like a museum than a home. Instead of the usual Disney merchandise, on Peregrine’s childhood bedroom walls hung fabrics from the far and middle east, the room was dominated by an ornate large brass studded tea chest and was decorated with a collection of hats from around the world.
Rising Star in The Steepling Times
Peregrine Heathcote on Bonner David gallery
Peregrine Heathcote’s paintings conjure a world of intoxicating glamour and intrigue, slipping across the boundaries of time to fuse iconic pre-war design with modern conceptions of beauty and silverscreen-era romance.
The images could depict a dream world—the pure artistic vision of a painter fascinated with the bygone glamour of his parents’ youth and his ownchildhood spent in Britain and Dubai, but also by the contemporary incarnation of glamour in an international jet-set culture.
Each canvas suggests a story, prompting us to imagine the circumstances around a single crucial scene. Heathcote purposefully leaves such questions open, allowing us room to construct multiple narratives. This weaving in and out of various realities, blending the literal and metaphoric is achieved with great skill, imagination, and ingenuity.
Peregrine Heathcote was born in London in 1973. His natural talent surfaced at the age of 12 attending classes at the Heatherly School of Art in Chelsea. He then went on to Stoneyhurst and Harrow where he completed his formal education. Heathcote then began his classical training in Italy graduating from the Florence Fine Art Academy in 1994 and began his professional career as a working artist in 1995.
Since commencing a professional career as a portrait artist in 1995, Peregrine Heathcote has completed over 100 commissions including Prince Jeffrey of Brunei, the Duke and Duchess of St Albans, The Earl of Bradford, The Countess of Effingham and Lord Selsdon.
His virtuoso and classical style of painting has also led to commissions from many notable captains of industry and commerce as well as celebrities in the world of film, theatre and television.
Interview on SouthwestArt
What inspired your winning entry?
What was your reaction upon hearing the news that you were selected?
I was surprised and happy.
Do you come from an artistic background?
My mother was a ballet dancer early in her career, traveling all over Europe dancing lead roles, after which she became an artist and designer.
Where did you study art?
I studied my techniques in Florence, Italy, for three years.
What is your favorite subject matter, and why?
Mysterious beauty, an intimate moment between a couple, different textures, and the motion of wind in fabrics.
What is the best advice you have ever received?
Follow your dreams, work hard, and you can achieve what you want if you really want it.
What is the most meaningful recognition you have received for your artwork?
One of my new pieces being purchased by the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Collection.
What is the one thing people will never see you paint?
Mediocrity.
Future goals?
To take my work to new audiences and make my mark on the history of art.
Representation:
Featured in the annual “21 Over 31″ competition on Southwest Art in November 2010
Julian Fellowes on Peregrine Heathcote
Figurative Art has had a bumpy ride in recent times. Just as Corbusier decided any architecture not demonstrating its ‘function’ was petit bourgeois, and thereby condemned us to three quarters of a century of publicly funded ugliness, so the Powers of the Artistic Establishment decided after the war to disinherit skill and promote whim as the most suitable school for today. But, over the years, some of us have grown tired of piles of bricks and old tents and videos of mouldering carrots. We are exhausted by the need to pretend these unlovely efforts have merit. Every century, to a degree, has promoted the excellence of the King’s New Clothes but our own era has exceeded most in its enthusiasm to celebrate the temporary and the hollow.
It is therefore a relief, as well as a pleasure, to discover that the real skills and older traditions, in other words the very craft of painting, has not died. The techniques and disciplines of former centuries do survive. Like early Christians, they are embattled and they must shift for support in a dogmatic and hostile art world, but they are there.
Peregrine Heathcote first developed his ability at the Heatherly School in Chelsea but when he wanted to take things further, he was faced with a dilemma. Visiting one prominent art school on a particularly cold day, he suggested that they might all benefit if the old radiator in the corner was turned on. The shocked administrator told him in no uncertain terms that the old radiator in question was in fact a sculpture of some distinction. At that moment, Peregrine knew he would have to look beyond the English art world with its rigid and lacklustre didacticism if he wanted to refine his own gift, and so it proved. Fiercely encouraged by his bewitching and indomitable mother, Lesley, he decided on the Fine Art Academy in Florence. Three years of study in that most beautiful of cities showed and explained the techniques of the Masters and allowed him to develop them in his own way and to suit his own vision. He returned to London and his career began. He paints in the school one might describe as romantic realism, following the traditions of portraiture established by Holbein or Geerhardts, which trace their line through the work of Ingres or, later, the Pre-Raphaelites and Angeli, to our own day. These are large footprints, of course, but I believe Peregrine is well on the way to filling them.