The Lake at Glyndebourne, May Painting

In 1981 Peter Thomas stopped teaching, bought a cow shed in the Dordogne and began painting seriously. Peter has been there ever since and exhibits mostly in France, Spain, America and the UK. The beautiful landscape of the south-west of France has been a major inspiration for Peter’s work. Originally a watercolourist, he now uses pastels almost exclusively, working ‘en plein air’. He finds pastel the ideal medium for using outdoors, allowing him to work fast and achieve rich colours and textures and capture the fleeting effects of light, colour and season. He often revisits favourite subjects, not usually grandiose landscapes but often the small details of the French or English countryside - bales in a field, reflections in a pond or river, wildflower meadows or the corner of a garden.