Design and Art Australia Online

Peter Day, community and environmental artist, was born in October, 1949 in Sydney. At Granville Boy’s High School he had wanted to study Latin until Ken Reinhard, Day’s art teacher at the time, persuaded him to do art instead. Day regards Reinhard as a lifelong mentor, not least for his attention to the process in designing. In the 1970s, having won a scholarship to attend the Royal Art Society at Lavender Bay, North Sydney, Day studied under painting master and Archibald winner, Arthur Murch. He describes Murch as a lovely-natured human being who taught him the finer points of oil painting, and invited the young student to assist him on a number of paintings and sculptures. However, the fascination for process lead Day to study Industrial Design at University of New South Wales, gaining a diploma in 1971. Having this design background is something Day values and views as a bonus in the marking of public art. Later, in 1980, Day completed a Graduate Diploma in Professional Art Studies (Visual Arts) from Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education (now College of Fine Arts) and in 2008 was undertaking a Master of Arts in Public and Community Art (by research) at Griffith University, Brisbane.

Day began making art in the early 1960s and in the early 1980s built a reputation as one of Sydney’s best known community artists. He painted his first mural in 1980 in Bourke Street, Surry Hills, after which he finished more than 170 public commissions, including some of the largest murals in Australia.

In bringing his design skills to public art, Day believes he is better able to scale and harmonise a work to its site. For Day, however, community involvement lies at the heart of the experience, providing both interaction and inspiration. Over the years in numerous situations, including a week-long open house event in his then home/studio (Kirk Gallery, in Surry Hills), Day came to respect the insights of ordinary people. Engaging local residents in community workshops in order to elicit good ideas became his modus operandi, as was the case with one of Day’s largest community murals, at the King George V Activity Centre in Cumberland Street, the Rocks (Sydney).

Day regards public art as a way of connecting people to their environment. This was as much the case with his painted mural at the Rocks, as it was of his ceramic mosaics such as Whale Story of the Gweagle People (2008) – a series of panels developed in collaboration with Jo-Anne Fuller in Peace Park, Sutherland Shire – told to Day by the local elders. It shows how the Orca whales’ annual migration from Antarctica would drive fish onto the shore and by way of thanks the locals would feed the whales as they came into the shallows and even up onto the beach. Stemming as it does from an oral tradition, this mosaic is designed to keep the story telling alive for passers-by and future generations.

Fundamental to the receiving and retelling of local stories is a democratic imperative that informs all Peter Day’s public art, whether that be murals and mosaics or banners, prints and sculptures. In 1996 Day established Environmental Art + Design, a company specializing in public art, cityscape analysis, and training and workshops.

As with his public works, Day’s studio practice, especially his works on paper, draws on diverse media including printmaking, pastels, impasto acrylic, liquid acrylics, oriental inks, digital photography and colour pencils. The imagery, though diverse, usually suggests landscape, with a keen use of colour evoking rather than depicting place. Day refers to his approach as mark-making, superficially akin to the spirit of abstract expressionism but one that developed in his work in the 1980s in response to having been inspired by the squiggles and textures of tree. It is these marks in the landscape that informs his marks on his surfaces, even though they are now often mediated by insights gained from digital scannings of the image.

Of special importance to Day is his study of keim mineral silicate (dry fresco) paint technology, which gives his work very high durability as well as distinctive aesthetic attributes including a soft velvety matt surface and earthy colours.

Peter Day has enjoyed numerous residencies and fellowships enabling him to travel and work in various locations. In 1978 he was an artist in residence at the Karolyi Foundation in Vence, southern France, and in 1983 travelled to America and Europe on a Churchill Fellowship studying public art. Also in 1983 he created a mural for the Australian Ambassador in Mexico and completed two murals for an office of the Australian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York. He regards his most important residency as that in 1996 – the year he married Rina Day – when he spent six weeks at Riversdale, one of four properties within Arthur Boyd’s Bundanon. Whereas Arthur Murch had taught him formal compositional structure, colour use and painting skills, Arthur Boyd inspired Day with his spontaneity. Consequently, Day spent his time at the residency trying to reconcile 'the battle of the two Arthurs’ within.

In 1983, Day moved to Padstow, Sydney. He and Rina travelled to her homeland, India, on several occasions from the mid 1990s onward.

Writers:

De Lorenzo, Dr Catherine Note:
Hoejbo, Anne Gram Note:

Date written:

2011

Last updated:

2011

Status:

peer-reviewed