Artist Statement - Jewelry: Peter Senesac has been making jewelry for a living in Gainesville for over 20 years. Primarily self-taught, he works mostly with silver and bronze but uses gold for commissions and special projects. He uses a variety of techniques including forging, fusing, roller embossing, constructing, and casting. Experimenting and learning new techniques has always been a priority. He strives to create pieces that provide a unique and hand-crafted quality coupled with a timeless elegance and fine craftsmanship.
Peter's designs are heavily inspired by the natural world with many ideas coming from the land and sea. He uses shapes borrowed from leaves and flowers because the compound curves, ruffled edges, and interesting textures translate well into metalsmithing techniques, particularly forging, forming, and roll embossing. Their organic shapes also help soften the hard look and feel of the metals. He uses the gentle curves and tapers found in vines and branches to tie elements together. Shells and sea life offer an infinite variety of shapes, forms, and textures.
The Seashell Collection is comprised of shells found on Florida beaches, directly molded and cast in solid metal to make exact replicas of these beautiful natural objects for jewelry and buckles. Wax originals are also carved and sculpted to make anatomically correct portraits of fish and animals to be cast into silver and bronze belt buckles. Balance and movement are important in Peter's pieces, both visually and mechanically. Designs don't always have to be symmetrical but they do have to be balanced. Stones, beads, colored metals, and rich textures add visual interest and contrast to highly polished surfaces. His attention to detail and finish is of the utmost importance to his craft.
Artist Statement Painting: Painting, for me, is a way of combining the art of observation and imagination with the process of manipulating tools and materials. I’m interested in the way the visible world is shaped by light and shadow, the effects of atmosphere on light, and the way reflections describe the surface of water. I like to use techniques such as wet in wet and layering that allow me to evoke the low light of dawns, the quiet solitude of foggy days and the texture of everything from trees to clouds to water. The mood and atmosphere are more important to me than trying to depict a particular place. The woods, the beach, and any body of water and it’s surroundings are subjects that fascinate me as they have all the ingredients for expressive paintings.
Working in series allows me to explore different aspects of a scene or idea. Multiple versions of the same idea or different views of the same place are interesting ways to explore a subject. I have also been exploring abstract ideas \using mixed media, watercolor, collage, spray paint and acrylic to express the mood and feeling of a scene or idea.
I started getting serious about painting in 1998 when I began attending an oil painting open studio with Eleanor Blair. I gravitated to watercolors from oils mostly as a way to do color sketching but found I liked the way water and paper and color interact. I started painting with watercolor on gessoed canvas and board in an effort to frame without the problems associated with glass. I also began to collage paper to canvas and board using multiple layers of acrylic medium and varnish to protect and preserve the paintings. This process allows me to work bigger and makes the work easier to view and much less fragile or susceptible to the environment. They are protected with layers of acrylic.