Celebrating Peter Frie

Peter Frie
The Hill
2026
Oil on canvas
120 x 80 cm
47 ¼ x 31 ½ in.

Today we are celebrating Peter Frie's birthday with the arrival of The Hill, a large oil painting now being shown in the Design House. This arrival coincides with Over the Hill, an exhibition of paintings and sculpture at RAVINEN, Båstad, which explores Frie's ongoing occupation with perceptions of nature.

Frie spends half the year in Båstad, Sweden and the other half in Pakhlok, Thailand, where he has a second studio. Despite this dramatic biannual change in climate, the subject of his paintings remains consistent. The Hill is a faithful emblem of Frie's perception of nature, void of figures and buildings, its subjects comprise a low horizon, unidentifiable foliage, and a great expanse of sky, with clouds that appear to have retained the luminescent quality of wet paint. What with the lack of identifiable landmarks and the paintings' abstract quality, the work of Peter Frie occupies a liminal space; his practice of painting entirely from memory lends itself to this effect. He takes no preliminary sketches or photographs, and instead paints the landscape as it appears in his mind. Although the specific locations of landscapes are often ambiguous, we know that The Hill is reminiscent of an early childhood memory of Stora Alvaret on the island of Öland, where Frie picked mushrooms with his Mother.

The composition does not fill the broad frame of the canvas, but rather appears within it, encroached by blankness. This blank space is representative of how memory is fickle, and frame the image as a fragment; with each painting we are made aware that truth is subjective, and each individual perception holds value.

Whilst the images presented are landscapes recollected by the artist, Peter Frie's work offers a space of quiet contemplation in the mind of the viewer. The dreamscapes pull at the tendrils of our own memories, creating a feeling that we have already bared witness to these anonymous views.

On the 17th June Peter Frie's Tree of Silence, which was once sited on the lawn at Roche Court, was unveiled outside of the Ystad Art Museum in St. Knut's Square, Sweden. Around the same time, Lotus was installed at the Norrviken Gardens, which is nearby RAVINEN, and compliments his exhibition there; Over the Hill will run until the 6th September. To find out more about Peter Frie, please enquire below: