Peter Knapp
Bridge of Continuity
Peter Knapp creates contemporary mixed-media works that explore the tension between structure and spontaneity. Working primarily on gesso-primed panels, he combines acrylic paint, ink, drawing, color pencil, and woodcut imagery to build layered compositions in which graphic precision meets intuitive gesture. His process embraces what he calls “controlled chaos,” allowing each work to evolve through accumulation, disruption, and discovery.
Rooted in his longstanding practice as a woodcut printmaker, Knapp’s current paintings bring together constructed and organic forms, often suggesting architecture, landscape, movement, and the rhythms of the natural world. Rather than presenting a fixed image, his surfaces reveal the history of their making, inviting viewers to look closely at the relationship between human invention, the physical environment, and the internal landscape.
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Selected Works
Each work is a one-of-a-kind mixed-media painting or woodcut print. Click individual works for details or purchase.
Available works typically range from $520–$5,000.
About the Work
Knapp’s current practice is built around a balance between the structured and the spontaneous. He begins with formal elements and then disrupts, layers, and reworks them through a process of additive and subtractive mark-making, allowing portions of the underlying image to remain visible while others are obscured or ruptured.
His mixed-media surfaces bring together acrylic, ink, drawing, color pencil, and woodcut-derived imagery. The graphic qualities of printmaking provide a sense of structure, while fluid paint and gestural marks introduce movement and unpredictability. The resulting works occupy a space between painting and printmaking, combining precise linear elements with richly worked surfaces.
Across the work, Knapp is interested in the relationship between the constructed world and the natural environment, as well as the physical and internal landscapes that shape human experience. Architectural and urban motifs can emerge alongside organic forms and fragmented textures, creating images that feel simultaneously familiar and open-ended.
Biography
Peter Knapp is an American contemporary artist based in Sunderland, Massachusetts. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Fine Art from the University of Massachusetts and began exhibiting his work in the 1970s, including participation in the Boston Printmakers 27th Annual Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. After a period away from his studio practice while operating a furniture business, he returned to making art with a renewed focus on painting, printmaking, and mixed media.
Since 2020, Knapp has participated in more than 40 juried exhibitions throughout the United States, with his work selected by curators and jurors associated with institutions including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Smithsonian. He is a Signature Member of the Copley Society of Art and an exhibiting member of Fountain Street Gallery. His practice continues to evolve through an ongoing dialogue between painting, drawing, woodcut printmaking, and experimentation.
Inquiries
For works not currently listed online or additional information, please contact the gallery.