I spent the night etc Painting

Painter and poet James Peck has been recognised for his visual diaries and prose and on the rare occasion has exhibited pieces taken from his many journals. From notes and prose both mixed with drawings and discarded correspondence, here finally is a collection of some of the more prominent pages. Between the years 1998 to 2018 and still today, Peck returns to the simplicity of drawing and creative writing. Both confessional and cryptic at the same time, the evidence remains the same; each one of us is located here with our own familiar sensibilities; the collective evidence of the human spirit and the search for intimacy. 'As with all “private papers”, these working journals allow us a glimpse into the creative unconscious of an artist who has always been ahead (and to the sides) of his time. James Peck is much more than merely a controversial artist from the Falkland/Malvinas islands who defied the political dogmas of Britain or Argentina. Since the beginning of his career and to the dismay of nationalists and folklorists, Peck has always transcended the limitations of geographical or even historical loyalties. Peck is rare, amphibious, multiple. He’s a unique painter and a poet by nature born in a chunk of land, in the outskirts of nowhere, that became trapped under the cross-fire of an absurd war (as they all are), waged between drunk dictators and recalcitrant colonialists. As Peck wrote in The Silent Path: “War was just the background of a life one did not choose” Since then, James Peck has been creating heart-wrenching works that are stripped off to the core. It started back in the 80’s with those forsaken landscapes and evolved towards a more abstract, Zen-like, urban, almost conceptual language that celebrates the meaningless and the fleeting. As it shows through these working journals, Peck’s work defies all expectations of unity and displays an unusual gaze committed to that vague and elusive dimension of our experience that cannot be exorcized. To Peck, that is the very definition of the sacred.' Pablo Baler, novelist, art critic, and Professor of Latin-American Literature at California State University, Los Angeles.