Colin PEILE

For 20 years until 2000 I worked mainly in the welfare field as a social worker, community worker, and teacher.  From 2000 to 2007 my main work was as an organic farmer.  I painted throughout this time but particularly from 2000 devoting one or two days a week.  From 2007 onwards my other time has been devoted to several community projects (a local community garden, a reconciliation action group and a worker cooperative selling organic produce).  These community activities have been important for me to keep my painting grounded and connected to current issues and concerns.

Painting for me has a social, political. and environmental agenda.  I would like my work to encourage reflection about important issues and at the same time to highlight the beauty of our world and our connections to nature and community.  For me Art needs to highlight the beauty in what we have but also the possibilities that we can create a better world.  Art is about creativity and so it embraces the notion that change is possible.  So art for me is a way to analyse the way things are and to envisage new possibilities.  Sometimes my message or story is very explicit while on other occassions it iis intensionally vague to offer multiple ways of understanding.  This is also important to me as I often find new stories in painting done several years earlier.  A painting needs to engage the viewer inculding myself and hopefully overtime different stories and perspectives can develop.  

In wanting to highlight aspects about our current situation over time my style has tended to become more realistic in orientation, to show things the way they are.  This involves using a very fine small brush for most of my works which means they take hours of detailed work.  I would like each section of any painting to be a potential painting in its own right.   I also like to create some unexpected surprises when people examine my painting from a closer distance. I often add other items not evident from further away, to try to tell another story.  This story might be about highlighting dangers and threats to the natural world and community or a more positive story about the possibilities for change.  Occassionally I just want to capture a beautiful scene without any agenda, however I have also found in doing this I sometime realize during the painting process that the scene does also lends it self to telling another story, an agenda reveals itself.  

The gallery below features paintings that focus on art and various self portraits which hpoefully provide another way for you to know something about me.

Hope you enjoy my paintings.

Exhibitions and prizes

Solo Exhibitions
        “Trees/ the wisdom of the elders” NONA gallery 2012
        “Still Life politics/Reflections on Class” NONA Gallery 2014
“The Goat Stand” NONA gallery 2022
“Colonization” Bee St studio 2023

Joint exhibition
“Pears” Exhibition with Cathy Bevis NONA Gallery 2009

Group exhibitions 
Charles Ginn Gallery 2002, 2004, 2006
“Circular Views” Group exhibition at NONA Gallery 2009, 2010, 2012
Artist in residence at The Nook Café, Jindalee 2015 and 2016
Bee St Group exhibition 2021, 2022, 2023

Prizes
1st prize - Contemporary Painting section RNA Show 2002.
1st and 2nd - Contemporary Painting section RNA Show 2004.
3rd - Contemporary Painting section RNA Show 2005.
Accepted finalist Redlands Art Award 2008
Accepted finalist Warwick Art Prize 2008
2 nd prize - Still life section RNA Show2010
2 nd prize Marine section RNA Show 2010
Emerging artist award – St Sebastians art Prize 2010
Accepted finalist Moreton bay Regional art prize 2010, 2011
Accepted finalist Sunshine Coast Art prize 2011

Education
B. Soc Wk. (First class hons). University of Queensland, 1980.
PhD. Social Work University of Queensland, 1990.