Features / Bristol24/7
Meet the artist behind our latest magazine cover
Pete Brown is covered in paint.
Just before our meeting, at Chance & Counters on Gloucester Road, he had been painting outside a Co-op, trying to “capture a moment time”.
The moment is now forever immortalised in his still-drying oil painting. And I suspect, no matter how many times he puts it through the washing machine, the moment will be forever immortalised on his jumper too.
is needed now More than ever
Pete, 57, grew up near Newbury before moving up to Bath in the 1980s to pursue a diploma in art. He later got a BA in fine art from Manchester Polytechnic.
After graduating, he spent a few years exploring Manchester’s modern art scene until he got tired of life as a “poor artist in a garage” and decided to retrain as an art teacher.
When a teaching career didn’t work out (“which is probably a good thing for art education”), he decided to move back to Bath and “then just thought I would like to draw the streets of Bath with charcoal”.
View this post on Instagram
At that moment, a few years before the start of the new millennium, ‘Pete the Street’ was born.
He started off painting with charcoal and then pastels before ultimately settling on oils – now his bread and butter.
And although he spent the first few years under his new moniker painting streets Bath, he has since graduated to cities across the world including New York, Havana (“painting those amazing 50s cars”) and Varanasi (“it has the burning ghat where bodies are cremated on open fires”).
Much of his work is inspired by the Boyle Family, a multimedia art group that emerged out of Scotland in the 1980s and who are known for remaking everyday objects with a high-level of detail.
He says that, like them, he tries to “record as much as possible” in his paintings – to recreate what he sees in front of him as precisely as possible.
View this post on Instagram
He adds: “I only paint from life, I don’t paint from photographs.”
Why streets?
For Pete, a six-time winner of the New English Art Club’s Critics’ Choice award, the answer is very simple: “I like discovering places and discovering cities and places through painting them. That’s really it!”
At the moment, he’s rediscovering Bristol after having initially made some brief sojourns down from Bath in the 90s.
He was inspired to start travelling around the city during the pandemic, and now wants to explore as much as he can – he started off in Totterdown and has so far made his way down Stapleton Road and Bedminster.
Along the way he even bumped into famed local photographer Karl Ritchie, who kindly signed his easel.
Pete the Street’s easel features some famous signatures – photo: Seun Matiluko
How does Pete decide which streets to paint?
“I don’t know what the answer is”, he says. “But it’s something that tickles me. Something I just think, ‘Oh, that’s interesting’.
“Very often it’s shops. They (signal) stuff going on in our lives.
“I sort of wander around looking for a solid composition – a bit of skyline, a bit of an interesting space…and then I’ll just set up and start chucking it on.
“I’m not really into big skies and amazing sunsets and that sort of thing. I’m into buildings and things that mark contemporary living.”
The ‘Pete the Street’ painting which graces Bristol24/7’s 78th magazine cover is a snapshot of St Mark’s Road in Easton. Bristol Sweet Mart is in the foreground. Fairy lights, traffic and people going about their day make up the rest of the scene.
It vividly encapsulates everyday life in Easton. A life which, our reporter Hannah writes (online and in our magazine), risks being forever disrupted by rising crime rates.
The latest Bristol24/7 magazine cover
Pete says Easton first caught his eye when he was driving through Bristol with his van.
He says: “I look at my right-hand side and see this road that looks amazing…it looked really busy…I remember coming across Afghan Tasty Corner and it’s this guy, an Afghan refugee, and his restaurant is pay what you think.
“So, I did one painting there and then just wandered around and went down St Mark’s Road and then thought, ‘Oh God, this is amazing’. It’s quite hard, with so many cars, to get a view of the street but I found this bit by Sweet Mart and then just started painting.”
He spent over three days painting, taking breaks to chat with some of the people who passed him by as he worked.
“You get to know some of the people a little bit, he says. “The guys that are selling Big Issue and all that and see the politics involved there. But there’s no politics in my work whatsoever. There’s no angle.”
Paul is not a journalist or an activist. He’s a witness.
Pete’s first solo exhibition in Bristol will take place from May 1-11 2025 at 17 Midland Road.
Main photo: Seun Matiluko
Read next:
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
