Peter Cehily Portfolio
Biography
ESAL
I joined ESAL East Suburban Artist League in November 2012. I was invited to join by Patti Giordano after having shown my art work at Peoples Library in New Kensington where she coordinated the exhibits. I became the membership chairman in 2013 and I have made many friends and have enjoyed the comradery of many very creative and accomplished fellow artists in the years since as well as having exhibited my work in many of their group and solo shows.
Subject Matter
As a painter and artist I often focus on subject matter that has an obsessive pull for me. I am drawn to subject matter and colors that have a compulsive feel as well, especially ones that remind me of certain objects, shapes or memories or that evoke the feel of a certain time, place or person. I paint mainly abstract or in an impressionistic style. I also focus on drawing and painting the human figure mainly from my mind’s eye. And I do the ‘occasional landscape” and now mixed media too. The ability to express oneself thru abstract painting is wonderful.
Bio
I started drawing on my own as a small child. My mother’s friends would ask her how she got me to sit still and draw and she would tell them that I just picked up the pen and started drawing on my own with no suggestions or encouragement from anyone.
Actually my brother Gregg and my Aunts Julie and Helen would often draw so I did start to pick it up from them very early in life as a toddler. I did not really study art in school aside from a few projects or the required art classes in grade school. In high school I had “other creative outlets.” I studied Journalism and PR at Penn State and Indiana University of Pennsylvania in the early and mid 1980s and graduated from IUP with a BA in Journalism and concentration in PR and Marketing in 1987. My first introduction to the “art world” came with a public relations internship that was part of my college studies at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts in Shadyside in 1987 learning the pr/ marketing side of art. I was not painting or drawing at that time.
I started to become interested in drawing and painting again after that in the mid 1990s and early 2000s. I took my first painting class a WCCC in 2004 and after that I starting taking classes in drawing and painting regularly at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts studying with the many regional artists there. I took a class there with abstract artist Mary Collins in 2007 and started following her classes at the Center and then at the Allegheny YMCA Northside. She encouraged me to pursue entering juried exhibitions in the region and it was also that that time that I started to paint abstract. I found abstract to be a very freeing way to paint. It loosened up my painting style and was quite interesting to me in terms of subject matter and artistic expression.
I exhibited in my first show at the Butler Art Center in 2007. I had a painting juried into my first juried exhibition in June 2012 at the Sweetwater Center for the Arts in Sewickley. After that I have consistently had work juried into various regional shows each year since 2013 and have shown my work in many group and solo shows throughout the region.
