Robert Peterson

I believe that all visual artist go through various stages in their career overtime where they will explore not only different mediums and subjects but also themselves. It has always been important to my development as an artist to go through these stages of exploring myself and different ways of creating because they have pushed me to come out on the other side a better artist and person than I was.

Initially, the paintings that I created were based solely on stock images of celebrities that I found on the internet. As I grew as an artist so did my desire to become more creative and so I began photographing men, women, and children that I know. Over the past two years, my paintings began to evolve and focus more on the black experience as I know it through my life which is obviously projected onto each new work. My art is my truth and my voice, it reflects a softer side of black people often not portrayed in the media and yet it still finds a way to show our strength and resilience, something that I want to see more of in galleries and museums.

Expo Chicago, Stand 107

April 7, 2022 to April 10, 2022

Navy Pier, Chicago IL

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Claire Oliver Gallery is thrilled to announce our return to Chicago for a long-overdue in-person celebration of art. At this inception of EXPO CHICAGO, the Gallery will bring major new works by artists Gio Swaby, Robert Peterson, Adebunmi Gbadebo, and Stan Squirewell. These artists whose practices vary but share a commonality in their desire to reframe the often-politicized Black body.

In addition to these powerful voices the Gallery will present a special exhibition, "The Lost Negatives," the works of photographer Jeffery Henson Scales. Historically significant, culturally cool, and artistically framed, the works transcend the view into the artist's unique vantage point to history. The exhibition features photographs from the 1960s including Henson Scales’ earliest forays as a photographer during the electrifying summer of 1967 when, at age 13, he toured the Midwest to see relatives in Chicago. As a Black teenager, he saw the poverty and oppression of Northern Black communities and when he returned to Oakland, CA became immersed in photographing the milieu of the Black Panther movement in Northern California. These images chart the emergence of his awakening as a documentary photographer as well as a Black man in a pivotal moment in the 20th century that echoes today’s Black Lives Matter movement.

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Robert Peterson: New Work

September 8, 2022 to November 5, 2022

Claire Oliver Gallery

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"My paintings and the people I paint will live forever, longer than you or I. Black men and boys are gunned down and dying daily and to often they don’t get the chance to live long lives. My goal with every painting especially those focusing on a black person is to not only change the narrative of how black people are seen but also to make sure that they get a chance to live forever through my works similar to the stories and paintings of Kings and Saints."

-Robert Peterson

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UNTITLED ART, Miami Beach 2021

November 29, 2021 to December 4, 2021

Miami Beach, FL

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CLAIRE OLIVER GALLERY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT POINT OF CONTACT, AT UNTITLED MIAMI
The Four Person Exhibition Will Feature New Works by Gallery Artists
Barbara Earl Thomas and Gio Swaby and Debuting Works by Gallery Newcomers Robert Peterson and Stan Squirewell
On View at Untitled Miami, November 29 – December 4, 2021

Point of Contact features the work of four artists whose practices vary but share commonality in their desire to reframe the often politicized Black body. Featuring figuration across mediums including Thomas’s signature polychrome cut paper, Swaby’s thread line
drawings on textile and polychrome quilt portraits, Peterson’s monumental oil on canvases and Squirewell’s mixed media photo collage, each work presents an opportunity for engagement where the art historical “gaze” is reversed and viewers are met as equals. The four artists use their works as a striking rebuke to white supremacy, eschewing negativity, they uplift by depicting their community in beauty, joy, and power as the ultimate form of resistance

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