Now living in France, Peter Grieve is an accomplished and recognized contemporary artist in his native UK whose lifelong love of animals and kinetics inspired his commitment to sculptures made from recycled materials. Grieve counts Greek sculpture, Renaissance painting, and the works of Cezanne and Van Gogh as his formal influences. In the 1980s, he saw shows by H.C. Westerman and The Hairy Who, a group of Chicago artists who combined freedom and play with excellent craftsmanship and a love of details. Inspired, he began making sculptures that captured natural animal movement. His works rely on a certain chance opportunity that an appropriate piece of recycled tin and steel will express. Through form and color, he examines the planes and sinews of each muscle and the mane of a lion.

Grieve’s menagerie has included elephants, giraffes, frogs, cheetahs, owls, lions, and alligators, all out of recycled tin. His sculptures are exquisitely detailed creations that bridge the natural one with the developed one.

Peter Grieve’s sculpture are singular – no two animals are crafted alike. Often Grieve carves each animal in wood, then cuts brightly painted tin and grommets to the surface of each work. While he may use the easy angularity of metal to convey a rough texture and look of an alligator, he is equally adept at shaping small bits of metal to recreate the sensual curve of a hind quarter or a jowl. Occasionally, he solders or welds tin or steel into animal shapes. His ability to capture the bearing and latent movement in each animal reveal Grieve as an accomplished artist of nature.