Peter Hearsey - Automotive Impressionism

“Make it free, make it free - splash the color around”… The words of Lord March when discussing that years upcoming Goodwood Festival of Speed poster with Peter. “And that was perfect, as that’s just how I like to paint” says Peter when I talked to him about the 22 years of producing the world famous event poster. Peter created the poster artwork every year from it’s inception in 1993 (although the 1993 poster was actually a retrospective poster produced in 1994) through to 2014 when he decided it was time to retire from being Goodwood’s poster artist and hand over the reins. “By 2014 the whole thing had got very commercial, and although Lord March would ring me each year to discuss the poster, the event wasn’t as personal as it was in the early years so I felt that I wanted to move on to explore non automotive subjects”.

Like many automotive artists of Peter’s generation, his career started in advertising in the 1960s having finished a 4 year course at Art School - 2 years of fine art and 2 years of graphic design. He soon realised that an office based advertising job was boring and not what he wanted to do, and so after a few months of landing a position in one of the biggest advertising agencies in London, he walked out. In the early 1970s and whilst working as a freelance designer Peter kept up with his passion for painting - the subjects were invariably cars, boats, planes and figurative work. He sold these pieces through a gallery on Cork Street in London. Buoyed by sales and feeling he wanted to pursue painting full time, Peter made the move away from London to live on the Isle of Man, island life being more in tune with an artist lifestyle. However, slipping back in to advertising and design almost by accident he was soon in high demand again, not least by the fledgling Duke video empire. Peter had met the son of TT motorcycle racer Geoff Duke,  Peter Duke. Duke was starting up a business putting old 35mm film reels of Isle of Man TT races on to the newly popularised video cassette tapes. Peter was asked by Duke to produce artwork for all of the boxes and advertisements. Over the years this became a pretty large undertaking.

Acceptance of a poster design in 1989 for an event at Lime Rock featuring British sports cars up against American racers found Peter an artist agent Bob Auten in the USA, and full membership of AFAS (Automotive Fine Art Society) soon followed in 1992. Between 1991 and 1994 Peter and his wife Anne spent up to 6 months of the year in the US where he would exhibit at all of the major events. “I was very lucky - we had met car collector Frank Allocca - he travelled a lot so we used to house sit for him - he cleared one of his garages out for me to use as a studio and NJ became our base during those US stays. I also got to drive some amazing cars - a Frazer Nash Targa Florio being a particular favourite”.

It was whilst the then Earl of March (now the 11th Duke of Richmond),  founder of the Goodwood Festival of Speed was visiting the US in 1993 that he saw and purchased a print of Peter’s from a local gallery featuring Rene Dreyfus in the Alfa P3. He was very taken with this artist and when he returned to the UK he decided to track Peter down and commission him to produce a poster for that years Festival of Speed. “Lord March had assumed I was an American artist, so was quite surprised when he found out I was British” says Peter.

Peter has produced artworks numbering in the thousands but he cites a Goodwood poster as one of his favourites. The 2009 poster of the Le Mans winning Audi. “I worked on the artwork for this poster for a long time and couldn’t get it to come together, so one morning I went into the studio and mixed up a load of paints, took a big brush and attacked it! Then, for some unknown reason, the whole thing came together, and to this day I still don’t know why” - maybe it was the freeness of expression that comes with not thinking too hard about something… Other favourite paintings include Joey Dunlop charging around the TT course on his winning Honda motorcycle, and one of C S Rolls in the 1905 Isle of Man TT.

Peter last exhibited in the USA at Pebble Beach in 2018 within the AFAS tent on the 18th green. Peter was proud to have produced the tour poster in 2008 and event poster in 2015, keeping up a tradition that has seen British artists make the event their own for much of the last 20 years with Barry Rowe, Peter and latterly Tim Layzell being chosen.

Peter’s personal attendance at events is now less frequent. Although he still has involvement with events on the Island. This year he produced a piece of work for a visit of Vintage Bentley and Sunbeam drivers and their cars to the Isle of Man celebrating Bentley Motors winning of the Team prize at the 1922 TT. The artwork and associated prints were exhibited at the hotel where the drivers were staying.

Peter is very happy working in a broad range of media, from charcoal and pencil, copper plate etchings, to acrylics and oils. His larger oil paintings often start out with a rough in pencil or charcoal, sometimes quite detailed, other times very approximate and rough, maybe only a couple of inches square.

Being professionally trained as a commercial artist, Peter can paint in any style he wishes, but it is the free impressionistic style that he really enjoys and for which he is so well known. Although he says he is not really influenced by any particular Impressionist, the artists he admires most, and may have had some influence, more so on figurative work than automotive, are Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pierre Bonnard, Walter Sickert and American artist Winslow Homer. He is also a great admirer of the Ashcan School of painters. Throughout his career he has always kept up with non-motoring subjects, particularly figures. He still attends life drawing classes. You can never practice too much!

For an artist of such standing on both sides of the Atlantic, Peter’s work is extremely good value with etchings starting from £125 and original paintings from just £450.

From an article by Rupert Whyte of Historic Car Art for Automobile Resource Magazine USA. September 2022.