The Beauty of Tragedy: Peter Ferguson’s Paintings Depict A Dangerously Dark World That Is All His Own
A few years had passed since the economy tanked, and by 2011, work in the publishing world grew scarce for Peter Ferguson. The Canadian artist had spent years illustrating for magazines and books, but at this point, he had to pivot to something else. He tried painting, “just out of an act of desperation,” Ferguson says by phone from his home in Montreal.
He only sent his work to one gallery, Roq La Rue in Seattle, but that was all it took. Within a few months, Ferguson had a show. He still works with the gallery and has a solo show scheduled there for December of 2019. [Editor’s Note: You can see his latest solo show at the gallery here.]
Ferguson creates scenes filled with intriguing characters often caught in very strange situations. His people quite often exist in darkly humorous fantasy realms where elements like vintage fashion and the occasional nod to pop culture connect their reality to ours.
Ferguson is interested in dreams. “Your imagination isn’t good enough to come up with that stuff, but it always feels like there’s this outside source shooting this ray into your head while you’re sleeping,” he says.
“When I’m painting, I’m trying to do something where it feels like it’s in a dream world. They don’t really mean anything. There’s stuff going on, but it’s really what-you-see-is-what-you-get in my painting. There’s no deep meaning behind it, I suppose,” he says. “I’m not addressing socio-political issues or anything, anymore than when you have a dream at night.”
The illustration background came in handy. “It really did help when I started to do painting,” he says, “to just do it and not worry too much about how it would turn out because it will probably turn out, it has to turn out.”
Ferguson works on Masonite: “I like the smooth surface,” he says. “I don’t like the texture of canvas.” He typically starts with a pencil drawing on the board. After that, he’ll seal it with a transparent acrylic to waterproof the board. This will keep the oil paint from soaking into the Masonite. When he paints, he often begins with the background. “When I was doing illustration, I would have to do it the fastest way possible,” he says. “Instead of working on what you like first, you’re working on maybe the background and spending days on the background. You don’t really know how it’s going to turn out, but you’ve got to do that because if you do the fun part first, then you’re going to lose interest and put it down and not finish it.”
He just moved into a new studio, which the painter shares with a photographer pal. Ferguson describes it as looking like “Darth Vader’s summer home,” very clean and newly renovated with black floors, white walls, and black furniture. “It’s the only clean space I’ve ever been in,” he says. The studio is about a half-hour walk from Ferguson’s home, which allows the artist to get in at least an hour’s worth of exercise daily. He typically works from late afternoon to early evening. “At this point, my eyes get all wiggly if I work for more than five hours,” he says. And in a designated studio, he can focus on working, instead of on distractions, like the computer.
As a child, Ferguson’s artistic ambition was to draw a kickass Imperial Stormtrooper from Star Wars. Then he saw Blade Runner and was inspired. “I just wanted to create worlds and stuff like that,” says Ferguson.
Winter is dangerous and you never know when there is going to be a camouflaged worm creature that comes and bites your head off.”
That he does and there’s still a bit of a pop culture influence in the worlds that he creates. “Desmond in Springtime,” with its hirsute merman at the center of the image, was inspired in part by the horror flick Cabin in the Woods. Ferguson’s merman has claws for hands and has just caught his next meal. Blood from a slaughtered fish dissipates in a water world that comes alive with jellies and other creatures filling the scene. Icebergs float in the background of an image that brings together the ocean’s surface with what may be lurking underneath it.
In “Pastoral,” a giant, worm-like monster emerges from the snow, looking a bit like the Dune worm or, as Ferguson describes, a young creature from the Aliens franchise. “It’s kind of a disembodied tube, an evil tube with teeth,” he explains. The monster is about to eat a guy who has fallen in the snow as his steed races off in the background. “There’s always this feeling in winter, especially in Montreal, that you can die out here if you’re not careful,” says Ferguson. “Winter is dangerous and you never know when there is going to be a camouflaged worm creature that comes and bites your head off.”
“Pastoral” was also a breakthrough for Ferguson. “I actually figured out how to paint snow, which I had never really been able to pull off before,” he says. It was a challenge. How do you discern the right shade of white for the light that is hitting the landscape? “I had to collect a hundred paintings of snow,” Ferguson says. Snow also figures prominently in a painting called “Discipline.”
At the center of this piece is a woman dressed in winter Victorian finery. A few locks of red hair tumble over her shoulders as she turns her head and scowls towards the viewer. She has a tight grip on the leash of her pet, a strange creature that resembles an oversized spider. “She’s an asshole,” says Ferguson of the woman in the painting. “She’s taking her insect out for a walk and treating it kind of harshly. She’s not a nice person. Not someone you would want to hang out with.”
Ferguson’s work is largely character driven, and he has a bit of a philosophy about how he develops the fictional people he paints. “Half the time, when I’m painting people, I’m creating people that I really want to be friends with. It’s almost like you’re a friend-creator—this person is going to be my long-lost buddy,” says Ferguson. “Other times, you’re just painting evil people.”
His favorite painting, Ferguson admits, is one called “Flaregun.” It’s a portrait of a woman all bundled up and standing next to a dog and in front of a truck. It’s not as surreal as many of his other scenes. It is, however, an example of Ferguson creating a fictional human that he would want to know in real life.
Typically, Ferguson doesn’t get autobiographical with his work. “The Fearful Gingers” is an exception. While Ferguson doesn’t look like the character in the painting, the range of emotions that young man in the painting displays is reflective of the artist. “That’s pretty much every emotional state that I go through in a given day. Just like, fear, anxiety, freaking out all day,” he says.
That’s pretty much every emotional state that I go through in a given day. Just like, fear, anxiety, freaking out all day…”
“The Fearful Gingers” is a complicated painting. There’s one character, a young man with red hair that forms a curly pouf at the bangs and the clothes of a mid-twentieth-century century teenage rebel. His image repeats across the painting with his poses and facial expressions changing to reflect different emotions. He bites his nails, cries while reaching for help and curls up in the fetal position. In some parts of the painting, tiny versions of the man appear, sometimes so small that you might miss him upon first glance. “When I did all the little guys at the end, that took days,” Ferguson explains. “I was like, I’m tired of drawing the same guy.” Still, he told himself, “It’s got to be done.”
Sometimes his paintings have well-developed narratives that might escape the viewer. Take “A Whole New Bag for Jeremy” as an example. It features a boy wearing a lifejacket and holding a paddle as he stands near a body of water. “He’s shipwrecked and he rode a shipping container to shore,” says Ferguson, adding a slight twist, “and finally doesn’t have anyone telling him what to do anymore.”
Every now and then, Ferguson likes to paint stories of freedom where, he says, “you’ve gotten away from the life that’s been ordained for you.”
“A Whole New Bag for Jeremy” is one of those paintings. So is “In All that Time There Had Only Been One Escape.” That work depicts a scene filled with people and baggage. The characters look to be caught in life-after-death; there’s a man in a trench coat holding his own decapitated head; a naked, armless man standing in a line; and a few guys sporting suits—the wings fixed to their backs lead one to believe they are either angels or demons. In the midst of this, a young, naked boy races away from a man pointing and yelling from the entrance of a building. Ferguson describes it as a “prison break” story about a kid running away from “purgatory or the afterlife.” The artist knows the ending of that tale too. “He goes back to the real world and to life and lives a life incognito.”*
Peter Ferguson’s new solo show opens December 12th, 2025 at Roq La Rue Gallery in Seattle.
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 51, which is sold out. Get our latest issue with a new subscription to Hi-Fructose Magazine here.
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