About the artist:

Stan Keith Peskett is an artist who has succeeded in mastering many skills not only as a painter, but also as an installationist, colorist, muralist, set- designer, and art director. Peskett was born in Epsom, Surrey, England in 1939. His father Stanley Roland Peskett was an exceptionally talented amateur artist and encouraged Stanley to draw and paint at an early age. This enabled him to win a junior art award to study art and design full time at the age of thirteen at Epsom School of Art. He studied drawing painting and ceramics and completed the intermediate course in 1956. In 1958 he was awarded full maintenance grant to study at Guildford College of Art. He spent some of his time out of college playing solo jazz and blues piano in London and Margate Kent entertaining GI’s Peskett spent the early sixties studying with Boshier, David Hockney and Patrick Caulfied. He graduated with an honors degree from the Royal College of art and was awarded an Abbey Scholarship enabling him to travel to Italy in 1963. Stan’s interest in murals and monumental scale art started in 1966, when he exhibited a 40ft canvas at the Royal Institute Gallery in Piccadilly London. This eventually led him in the direction of installation art. From 1967 he painted murals for commercial and residential interiors including an Alice in Wonderland Fantasy for Julie Christie and in 1970, was invited to create a giant installation (total house style) for the original Fiorucci Store in Milan Italy. Lena Wertmuller used it in her 1974 movie “All screwed up”. In !974, Peskett set up a loft and workspace with English ex employee William Waldron, in Soho New York, where he continued to create a diverse range of installations and murals that led him to become a player in the New York Art World, being the first person in 1978-79 to promote Jean Michel Basquiat, Lee Quinones, and Ramelzee A two year break from New York to San Francisco in 1982-84 enabled the artist to team up with the Rock Band ‘The Tubes’ member’s Prairie Prince and Mike Cotton. They worked together on sets and promo music videos as well as a satirical ‘Theoretical Theme Park’ entitled ‘Themeworld’ and exhibited it in San Francisco and New York galleries. He returned to the UK in 1989 and in 1991, he also returned to easel painting and exhibited landscapes. In 1993 Stan painted with ten local schools a mural of William Blake having a Vision of Angels in the Peckham and Dulwich section of southeast London, and instigated more of Public Art projects in the London area, after the success of this. Peskett has been living in Virginia and California since his return to the US in 1999. He has is also collaborating with Prairie Prince and Michael Cotton and has worked with them on the sets for the Styx and Bette Midler stage tours 2003-4. He is currently mural/easel painting and teaching in San Francisco and Mendocino County, California. He has played a blues and jazz piano for more than 50 years.