Rafe Harpending 

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      My primary influences are various Abstract styles from the early 20th Century and later. Braque, Picasso, Dali, Grosz, Tanguy, and others have had an outsized if very indirect impact on the development of my aesthetic, particularly as these pioneers are largely responsible for taking art on a more emotive, distorted track that is congruent with the run of my personality. However, my style has been much more directly shaped by geometrics such as Rothko, Mondrian, McLaughlin, Lichtenstein, and other masters of the post-WWII era. The 1960s wave of advertising and graphic design, which I grew up with, has also played a critical role in shaping my current aesthetic.

       Much of my work focuses on the use of hard geometric shapes (squares, diamonds, etc.) as a background format for my pieces. I often add design elements not typically seen in geometric art (the pointed spikes are one example) although much of my work has been "purely geometric."  My focus on these shapes hints at an internal desire to establish order in an otherwise chaotic life; but as can be seen in some of my more whimsical pieces, the order represented in many of my geometric pieces is juxtaposed with disruptive visual elements.  This expresses an obsession with the tension between order and chaos, the notion that humans can create a thin veneer of spatial and temporal structure and order, but underneath lies the inevitable turbulent and maddening realm of nature. Most of my pieces are merely a continuation of expressing this conflict which has long been a feature of our Western civilization.

-Peter “Rafe” Harpending