Peter Jaret

I first started drawing and painting on a smartphone back in 2010, inspired by David Hockney’s iPhone paintings. I found a community of people on flickr who were doing digital art on mobile devices, and I learned a lot from them, especially from the marvelous Susan Murtaugh. In 2013, I was thrilled to have one of my digital paintings chosen for an Autodesk exhibition in San Francisco.

Eventually I went from the newest medium – pixels on an iPad — to the oldest, charcoal on paper. I really loved the feeling of a stick of charcoal scraping across paper. I liked the lovely messiness of it. From there I began to fiddle with pastel and oil. I’ve even experimented with linocuts. Since I came to art pretty late, I figured I better try everything, and fast.

Several of my paintings have been featured in Art for Life auctions, which raise money for Face to Face in Sonoma, a nonprofit that provides services to people with HIV. In 2018 I was honored to be chosen as artist-in-residence for the Bay Area Rainbow Symphony. Four of my landscapes are being used to illustrate concert programs during the orchestra’s 2018-2019 season.

I live with my husband Steven in Sonoma County, the subjects of some of my drawings and paintings. In addition to these, I’m working on a series of small paintings inspired by the curious, sometimes moving, and often hilarious way that gay men represent themselves in erotic selfies – part of a long tradition of artists trying to capture the beauty of the human form.

For more information on my work, please contact me at pjaret@sonic.net