Peter Woodhead is an artist based in London and South Wales. Now in his 70s after a thirty five year career as a social worker Peter is now indulging a lifetime interest in the visual arts through undertaking an MA in Fine Arts at City and Guilds Art College in London.
His current practice is an exploration into multiple aspects of a single landscape, Newgale Beach in Pembrokeshire. He has memories and personal experience of this beach that go back to childhood visits in the 1950s and 60s.
Peter works with a variety of media including painting, photography, film and using found objects from the beach to create artwork.
Respect for the environment is central to his work. No irreplaceable beach material such as pebbles can be taken away from their environment.
The beach landscape is the end result of both small changes and major historical events which involve human activity and natural forces. 10,000 years ago during the last glaciation, the area was covered with ice. Evidence of this ice movement still exists today in the millions of pebbles made from rocks which the Irish Sea ice sheet picked up on its journey southward.
In the Bronze Age and Iron Age the beach was part of the seaborn trading network along the Irish Sea coastline. In the 18th and 19th century it was an industrial site where coalmining took place. The striking shape of the outcrop of Rickets Head at the south end of the beach is the result of large sections of cliff face being removed as part of this activity. today it is mainly used for leisure activities and has become a center for seaside holidays and surfing.
The beach is a place with complex timescales and rhythms of movement: the deep time of geology; seasons and tides; the movement of water; the level of the sand; the speed of a snail crossing a rockpool.
There is an intricate interdependence here between the agency of tides, wind , weather seasons and the geology, water, sky, flora, fauna and people on the beach.
The beach is a place with different moods and poetics of space that shift in time.