Peter Opheim

Peter Opheim is a painter-sculptor living and working in NYC.

The artist makes small sculptures of colored polymer clay, and then paint portraits of his characters on canvas. His oil paintings are windows into a world unlike any other, one populated by the unconventional and provocative juxtaposition of a childlike imagination with adult thoughts and emotions. Opheim’s funny characters are well known around the world. His heroes are bizarre creatures that resemble animals or cartoon characters.

“I wanted to paint things that I hadn’t seen before, things that didn’t exist except my

imagination,” - the artist explains.

Brightness and distorted proportions in Opheim artworks reveal child's consciousness, which enters adult territory, remaining in its own illusions. A series of paintings and sculptural objects is a subtle ironic study of the world of children's fantasies, which become the basis for the human personality’s formation.

Peter Opheim was born in 1961 in Landstuhl (Germany). He grew up in Minnesota, studied Oriental studies and Economics at the St. Olav Institute.

Opheim's works are in the collections of a number of museums in the USA, Germany, Japan and South Korea, private collections of large corporations. The artist was awarded the Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant.