In terms of his pictorial production, McLeish has been investigating both psychological and science-based themes, drawing on its academic training as both a Mathematician and a Fine Artist.
Our artist Peter McLeish is a visual artist and a composer who merges his scientific training and knowledge to produce paintings and sound art inspired in the natural world.
He was taught painting by legendary Canadian painters and Fine Arts Professors Yves Gaucher and Guido Molinari. McLeish holds a BA Fine Arts from Concordia University: Montreal, Quebec, and a MA Fine Arts from University of Guelph: Guelph, Ontario. He has been awarded several research grants and sponsorships, has published extensively, and has a long list of interviews. He has engaged in film presentations, multimedia exhibitions and lecture tours, including at the prestigious University of Oxford and University of Cambridge in the UK. In 2003, McLeish Red Sprites research led to a collaboration with Dr. Colin Price from University of Tel Aviv on the previous NASA Space Shuttle Columbia's MEIDEX mission.
In terms of his pictorial production, McLeish has been investigating both psychological and science-based themes, drawing on its academic training as both a Mathematician and a Fine Artist. One of his most significant painting series based on scientific connoisseurship is ‘The Glory Project’.
McLeish works with the encaustic technique, using drawing materials such oil stick, oil bar and other traditional drawing materials. Artists often employ encaustic paint while the wax is hot. However, McLeish often paints encaustic while the wax is cold, which is often referred to as “cold encaustic”.
Although encaustic oil painting is a difficult technique, the artist feels it gives his work a greater use of transparency and light. McLeish often works in a series because he feels that continuity in theme exploration is the best way for him to develop unique works of art.
On The Glory Project
McLeish exhibited his first large-scale art and science installation, titled The Glory Project at Star Theatre in the Planetarium de Montreal from 1998 to 2000. A ‘Glory’ is a circular rainbow formed on top of clouds.
The Glory Project involved projecting thirteen digitally enhanced scanned slides of paintings of a cloud Glory on the 20-metre-wide dome ceiling of the Star Theatre. This was McLeish’s University of Guelph Master of Fine Art thesis exhibition.
Each slide dissolves into the next-creating a Glory in transformation accompanied by the song 'Ave Maria' (by Giulio Caccini -1550-1618). Some of the influences and inspiration for the Glory Project come from the writings, philosophies and / or works of theory of Gesamtkunstwerk (the total work of art), from Philipp Otto Runge’s unfinished work ‘Morning’ (1809), and from the theory of Gustave Mie (Mie Theory).
The Glory Project paintings are made through the technique of encaustic painting and are unique and stunning pieces available to collectors through Arrière-Garde.
McLeish work is in several collections, including the Alcan Corporate Collection.
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