Peter Carlson

117 Harrier Ridge Road

I grew up on an island in SE Alaska with people who made their livings on fishing boats and in saw mills. They were people who had moved to the edge of the earth—a landscape battered by storms, carpeted with moss—and lived bound together by the stories they told. I grew up listening to those stories. Stories about how to get along in that isolated, unforgiving landscape, how build something, how to get drunk without falling down. About where to find what you’re looking for, about the war and who was there, what we know about it now. Stories about your family, about the people you never knew. Stories about the last time someone tried this or that and how it prospered, how it failed. I believe that our stories are the most important thing we have to offer each other. This is what I paint. The people in my paintings aren’t aware that they are the center of their own stories. They are busy with their lives, with getting to work, with talking to the woman behind the cash register, with chopping down the enormous beanstalk. Mostly they are living, working, trying to get along.