Roland Peterson's Vibrant California Colors
By Chadd Scott on
If Roland Peterson’s “Visual Feast” were an actual feast, it should come with a warning about tooth decay. Peterson paints with the juicy colors and gummy richness of gumdrops and licorice. Thick, sweet, gooey. Make your teeth hurt sweet.
The Elverhøj Museum of History and Art in Slovang, CA serves up “Roland Petersen: The Visual Feast” through January 5, 2025, in what will be an introduction to the artist for most.
Roland Peterson, 'Enjoying the View,' 2009. Courtesy Elverhøj Museum of History and Art.
Petersen’s (b. 1926; Endelave, Denmark) family moved from Denmark to San Francisco in the late 1920s. At 18, he enlisted in the Navy during the height of World War II, participating in the Battle of Iwo Jima. Afterward, he would go on to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of California – Berkeley. Following time spent studying in Europe and teaching art history at Washington State University, Petersen became the second professor at the newly formed art department at the University of California – Davis where he was instrumental in creating one of the leading art departments in the nation.
He invited Wayne Thiebaud (1920–2021) to teach there. Thiebaud also painted with cake frosting richness, and sweetness, and color. He became world famous for actually painting cakes and pies and ice cream.
Peterson and Thiebaud were colleagues at UC Davis for decades. Mike Henderson, too. Peterson taught at the school from 1956 –1996 and continues carrying the professor emeritus title. They were all both successors and contemporaries of Richard Diebenkorn (1922 –1993) and David Park (1911–1960), who along with Elmer Bischoff (1916 –1991), are regarded as the three kings of the Bay Area Figurative Movement.
Beginning in the 1950s and carrying through 70s, the Bay Area Figurative artists broke new ground adding figures and objects to the painterly, gestural, purely abstract imagery being produced by the Abstract Expressionists in New York – Pollack, the de Koonig’s, Mark Rothko, etc. AbEx meets landscape and figure painting in what has been called “the first significant North American art movement to be based on the West Coast.” That laurel ignores the Indigenous basketweaving, textiles, and other artforms historically centered on the West Coast, but that’s an art historical correction for another day.
Influences of Diebenkorn, Park, and Thiebaud are readily apparent in Peterson’s paintings. Hans Hoffman, with whom he studied in Provincetown, MA as a young painter after college, too. And van Gogh. Van Gogh’s colorful, celebratory late work illuminated by a glaring California sun. More than a dash of Edward Hopper as well. Peterson’s figures aren’t interacting. They’re isolated, even when together. A “nostalgic loneliness” as he’s described.
Roland Peterson, 'The Rains Came.' Courtesy Elverhøj Museum of History and Art.
Make no mistake, however, Peterson wasn’t derivative. His high key, saturated, Candy Land colors, geometry, lines, unusual use of shadow, and the bizarre interplay of figures are unique.
“The vibrant colors make the paintings ‘alive’ for me such that I feel as though I am part of the scene,” Sandie Mullin, Executive Director of the Elverhøj Museum of History and Art, said. “When I first saw Roland’s work, I was reminded of my favorite artist, Chiura Obata (1885–1975), whose ‘World Landscape Series’ in the early 1900s brought to life the tumultuous landscapes of Yosemite National Park. Later, I learned that Petersen had studied with Obata at Berkeley. The works of both artists move me in a profound way.”
Admirers of Peterson’s paintings initially tend to grope for comparisons out of a desire for context because he doesn’t share the fame of a Diebenkorn or Thiebaud, despite having received Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships with works in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art to name a few.
Peterson is best known for his Picnic Day series of paintings emanating from the annual UC Davis tradition. What began in 1909 with the school inviting locals to visit its new dairy barn became an instant success, now attracting about 70,000 attendees. Peterson first painted Picnic Day in 1959.
“Almost all his work for the last 60 years is part of the Picnic series,” Peterson’s wife Caryl said. “On occasion he does other subjects, but picnics are his claim to fame.”
Caryl Peterson guesses her husband has painted “many hundreds” of Picnic paintings.
In the leadup to the Elverhøj exhibition, which debuted on October 26, 2024, Mullin was able to visit Roland Peterson at his home and studio, finding an artist still working with his 100th birthday approaching.
“Stunning canvases lean casually against the walls, and in the center of one of the rooms is a huge painting that is in progress. Although he had broken a hip only two months before our visit, he is recovering quickly and uses a tall rolling stool and a brush with some sort of homemade extension stick with which he can continue to paint,” Mullin said. “The impression I was left with is of a man who is compelled to create – that painting is not only a passion of his, but as necessary to his existence as breathing.”
Roland Peterson, 'Study for Morning and Afternoon Suburban (Pacifica),' 2007. Courtesy Elverhøj Museum of History and Art.
With its focus on celebrating Danish culture and the Danish-American immigrant experience, typically through fine art and artists, the Elverhøj Museum makes for the perfect setting when getting to know Peterson’s artwork. The little town of Solvang with roughly 6,000 residents 35 miles northwest of Santa Barbara was founded by Danes, for Danes, in 1911.
Following World War II, as the town’s Danish businessman returned from military service, they began exploring new ways to earn a living. They gradually invested more and more resources into tourism, even changing the look of the downtown area to reflect a Danish provincial style. The plan worked in attracting visitors searching for a glimpse Danish culture and today, tourism represents Solvang’s main economic driver.
Admission to the Elverhøj Museum is free.
