Peter Potapoff Artist Biography

Born and raised in British Columbia, Peter’s family lived in the mountainous West Kootenay region of the province. As a boy he spent most of his spare time hiking and fishing the numerous streams near his home. Often he and several of his friends would venture too far from home only to arrive home in the dark to some very anxious parents. When finally old enough to drive, his first vehicle was an old army jeep, which allowed him to venture even further into the wilderness. Quite often Peter would drive the jeep as far as the bush roads would permit and then bushwhack his way to a remote mountain lake simply to enjoy the serenity this location provided. “I have always enjoyed the outdoors. It’s at the core of my being and it is where I belong.”

 Peter received his first set of oil paints when only 10 years old. As a youngster, he would often watch his cousin painting with the assistance of a mail order painting course and it rubbed off on him. “I knew intuitively that painting was something I wanted to do”, says Peter. Quite often, Peter would take his sketchpad and a few paints into the outdoors. During these early times, the only photos he could take were black and white, so he chose to focus on painting from raw nature. In high school, Peter’s artistic abilities were immediately recognized and he was often called upon to illustrate yearbooks and paint murals. “Art classes were all that really interested me in school,” explains Peter.

 After high school Peter worked in the outdoors as a forestry and wildlife technician and painted only when his busy schedule allowed. He spent many days in remote areas in his native province and later in Canada’s Northwest Territories. While in the North, Peter traveled extensively into the most difficult to access but awe-inspiring landscapes. The most memorable being a 170-mile snow mobile trip to a remote Inuit hunting camp on Victoria Island in the high Arctic and hiking through rugged Auyuttuq National Park on Baffin Island.  He often found himself among the abundant wildlife in the region and it seemed only natural to start including animals and birds in his landscapes. 

 In 1990 he participated in a weeklong workshop with master wildlife and landscape artist John Seery-Lester and realized that he had to paint full time. He began to enter and win prestigious art competitions, which included Ducks Unlimited Canada and BC Wildlife Federation’s Artist of the Year.

 Today, Peter has come full circle and is once again spending much of his time in the outdoors, getting his feet wet in the clear mountain streams of the mountains and painting raw nature just like he did as a youngster.  “The great outdoors is the best studio and I feel connected to it in a most profound way”, says Peter. “It’s a passion of mine, to paint things just as they are in nature. Photos tend to lack much of what is true”. In the studio he works primarily from field paintings and sketches with notes that he took on location.

 Peters paintings hang in private and corporate collections throughout Canada, the US, Europe and Japan.