Peter Kitchell Biography

Peter was born in 1950 in Cambridge, MA to architect/artist parents. He was encouraged to paint at a very young age and began his formal training at the Modern Art and DeYoung Museums in San Francisco at the age of five.

 While completing his education at San Francisco Art Institute and California College of Arts and Crafts, Peter and his friends built a light show company which played the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballrooms, accompanying groups from the 'Righteous Brothers' to 'Big Brother and the Holding Company'.

In the late 60's, with traditional structure falling apart in American and European colleges, Peter set out looking for soul in primal culture. It was winter and he headed for North Africa, arriving in

Morocco and crossing into Algeria, then traveling down through Niger, across the Sahara to the Savannah and Gold Coast. A year later, sick and very thin, he headed back up through the Western Sahara and on to Portugal.

As a daily ritual he drew or painted the people and landscape. Language being a problem, these drawings and paintings were often his only means of communication. He lived among the Berber tribes, with devout Moslems and ancient matriarchal societies, all the while painting the pieces that would

become part of his first solo show back in the Bay Area in the beginning of the 70's.

Through the 70's he was making a living designing and building furniture and commercial spaces. As well, he continued his tradition of photographing, painting and drawing from the landscape, often going to the desert in the southwest for months at a time. This led to his second solo show in San Francisco.

By the 80's, with a TV news special on Peter's work and shows in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Houston and San Francisco, his career had finally reached full swing. This brought freedom to branch out and a project called, "The Post Science Fair," combining the themes of science and art. Along with friends "The Nuclear Beauty Parlor", Peter selected a YMCA in the middle

of the SF's Tenderloin District. The crowd of hookers, homeless and artist mixed with a few "suits", was every bit as odd as the exhibitors. They encouraged many local artists, scientists and street people to participate with conceptual displays far stranger than the high school science fair they were parodying. Over the following year a video of this event was put together for local television.

In this time there were long trips to South and Central America. On one trip wandering through parts of the Inca Empire seldom seen by
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