In the Studio with Artist Peter T West

Today, we are going In the Studio with artist Peter T West. His artwork is on display at our current 25th Anniversary Light show on display June 24 - August 30, 2026 in Patricia Barland Gallery.

Peter T West is a photographer and lifelong resident of Maryland. His photographs take on an often unseen perspective, emphasizing subjects that may otherwise be passed by. An avid traveler, Peter has photographed locations all around the world.

What is your work’s relationship to time?

Because I work primarily in the natural world - and far less with human subjects – “geological time” is a subtext, though seldom the intended subject, of my work. Two examples included in the CAC shows embody that approach:

The image of the Milky Way over Yosemite is reminder that, human consciousness, and art as an expression of it, has existed for only a minuscule fraction of the lives of stars and the universe.

Yet, also, because of the setting of the image, in one of our national parks, of how much human beings, for good AND ill, have had an impact on the natural world, the embodiment of environmentalist Wallace Stegner’s quotation: “National parks are the best idea we ever had. Absolutely American, absolutely democratic, they reflect us at our best rather than our worst.”

Similarly, my image Road to the Andes depicts the uplifting of the earth’s crust over geological time. Yet the landscape also contains memories of the impact humans have had on it: the road, certainly. But less obvious, but possibly more dramatic, the weathered terraces on the hillsides, evidence of Inca agriculture over hundreds of years.

How does experimentation factor into your art practice?

At the moment, and for the balance of my “career” (I am retired and dabbling in art), I believe experimentation will be the overriding element of my work.

I am studying in a mentorship program with an organization called National Parks Photography Expeditions: through guided thematic work and practical application of post-production techniques, I have seen a transformation (which I expect will be ongoing) from pure documentary photojournalism – which is my background – to the application of artistic techniques to photography. I am moving from “recording the image to feeling the image”, as an example in Still Life Shenandoah Milkweed.

How do you continue to find inspiration and ideas? Is that something that you struggle with?

I hope it never DOES become a struggle. Though I can understand how it might.

But for now, I cannot conceive it ever would be. Working in the natural world and being born traveler I can’t imagine not having new and fascinating “things to see” and photograph. Be it landscapes or people.

I just got back from Peru with hundreds of images – including, of course, many duplicates and multiple exposures of the same subject - to work through to try to produce a one-person show from my trip as a sort-of “sequel” to a previous project I did on my return from Cuba which appeared nearly two years ago at Quiet Waters Park as in, for one example, Ghosts of the Revolution.

And, IF the terrestrial world ever does begin to disappoint, I have recently married my love of scuba with photography. So, a whole new world awaits!

What drives you to continue making art?

Two cliches come to mind: discovery and egotism.

Discovery, in the sense that there is always somewhere in the world that I have never been and wanted to go. To see the land, meet the people and experience the culture.

And in the sense of seeing how I can capture what I see in that roughly 16 by 9 space of the viewer finder and translate it into the excitement or wonder or even dislike of what I saw into a meaningful image that strikes an emotional chord with a viewer.

Egotism in that I can take that leap of faith that what I see through the viewfinder is interesting or striking enough that another person wants to see it -possibly even own it.

Given that I have little formal training in art, I must often make up for knowledge with an overabundance of “self-confidence.”

What is something that you want to explore in your work in future?

The boundaries between documentary photography – photojournalism, with which I familiar- and portraying photographs as art, which I am not. And how to slowly blur those boundaries, and eventually successfully cross, them in my work.

I have begun through my mentorship to push the boundaries bit by bit, but it is not an intuitive process, as taking an “accurate and interesting”, but dispassionate, photograph of a subject is very different, generally, from “creating a picture” design specifically to instill an emotional reaction in the viewer.

They are not necessarily two distinct and different realms, but the more I try for emotion, the more it challenges both my technique and my skills in the electronic “darkroom”. Still, I suppose, as do all artists in their different media, I hope one day to “get there’ consistently.