The Williamson is proud to present an exhibition by Birkenhead born Pete Hoida. He lived in the area until the age of 4. He and his parents lived with his grandparents in Glover Street, before moving to the newly built Woodchurch Estate. His grandfather worked at Cammell Laird shipyard, his father in Liverpool for a company that fitted out the interiors of Cunard and Blue Funnel liners.

Pete Hoida’s career in painting spanned fifty years. In 2017 he wrote:

“What use painting is to woman or man is unknown, yet it is surely necessary, as attested to by the caveman and the dandy. I have long pursued a path that avoided the health-plans and dogmas of the high-priests and the moneylenders and yet have overthrown nothing but painterly clichés and visual platitudes. I am not looking to produce patterns; each period of painting has created, or found, its own identity. Sometimes the characteristics of the work, or foundations, carry over from one year into the next period. Or subside for a time before reappearing transformed, made new yet again. Paintings from the 2010’s can present aspects of the 70’s. The colour say, or the motif, or motive force, the brush-stroke, the time-line, the structure, its translucency or opacity, its serenity or punch. I have eschewed drawing, images, narrative and subject; I have defied the camera that always lies preferring the story of the brush that lies. I have quarrelled with the canvas and lost and I have found the surface and ignited it. The prime purpose of my work is immediacy of pleasure in the simply visual, but also promoting through its structure, its facture and expressive gesture, the values of order and civilisation; a civility of vision founded on the beauty of discernment made manifest.”

Pete Hoida completed his studies at Goldsmiths, London, moving to Stroud in 1974 where he painted full-time until his death in 2023. He maintained links with the Wirral and the video ‘Black Severn Angel’ on his website includes filming in New Brighton, The Priory and Rock Ferry. Exhibited widely in the UK; his paintings are in private and corporate collections in the UK and abroad.

You can now view a selection of his incredible work at the Williamson Art Gallery.

MORE ABOUT PETE HOIDA

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