For half a century, Adam Peck’s creative work has taken shape in the mediums of architectural design, painting, and sculpture. Peck currently makes his home in Provincetown, MA, the historic artists’ colony that has nurtured countless world-renowned painters and writers, and spends part of each year in Paris.
Peck’s paintings and sculptures center on iconic graphic images such as his ubiquitous house, black birds and lighthouses, rendered with a precision that reflects his architectural outlook trained on a personal vision.
Works by Adam Peck
Sand Parlor, 12 x 12in - $1,250
Ossuary, 6 x 6in - $650
Summer Digs, 12 x 12in - $1,250
Fly Ball II, 12 x 12in - $1,250
Snow Globe, 18 x 24in - $2,050
Whyte Light, 12 x 12in - $1,250
Two Trees, 24 x 30in - $2,650
• Six Feet Tall - SOLD
• Baby Blue - SOLD
• Oyster - SOLD
Artist’s Statement
An image that has become iconic in Adam’s artwork is the little house. This simple and symmetrical outline of a dwelling, standing alone or in an abstracted landscape, has limitless possibilities for the artist.
“When I look at a house passing on the street, I don’t see the façade so much as a whole life going on there. It could be happy or sad - someone could be being born or dying. For me, it represents the great mystery of something that is very integral to what we consider civilized life - a house, a habitation, a shelter. The house has a face, it has a façade, and like all things at its most reduced, it is symmetrical.”
- Adam Peck
House Image
by Adam Peck
So what’s with the house? I have used this image since about 1980. (That is starting to look more and more like 1890 somehow.) It came about when I was an editor at Country Living Magazine. This sort of “primitive” flat on, un-detailed depiction of a house was a not uncommon occurrence among early naive painters. I never saw one, however, that was as ordered as the image I have developed.
The common design was usually freehand and often with a random placement of windows and doors. Often with many windows, two storied some with chimney, some not. I saw in the image something iconic. As a kid, I rarely lived in the same house for very long. I cannot think of one that seemed like ours. We always rented though we often didn’t pay the rent. That instability, I suppose, has caused me to look at all houses in a curious way. I always wonder what that place holds within.
A happy home? Some dark abuse? A new child? Someone old and waiting? The grandest can seem forlorn and a shack full of foolish joy.
I seem to be attracted to symmetry and order in my work, which is contrary to the way I live. So I took the house image and made up a sort of mathematical order.
That said, I rarely measure unless for a specific purpose. I can’t think of any at the moment. I usually look through my folio of house stencils I’ve used. Each one has a story. When I encounter them they all clamber to be used again. And sometimes I do. But often I grab a piece of heavy paper and cut a new one. Someday I am going to get them all out and make one painting with all of them together.
House, home, shelter, palace, safety, joy, sorrow, feast, hunger, birth, life, sometimes abandonment, and death, of course.
Every one of them looks back at me and knows the truth.