American interdisciplinary artist Peter D. Gerakaris creates vibrant paintings, public installations, and origami sculptures that engage nature-culture themes through a global lens. Raised a free-range child in New Hampshire, Gerakaris earned a BFA from Cornell University and an MFA from Hunter College where he received the Tony Smith Prize.

The artist’s works are showcased in various permanent institutional collections including the National Museum of Wildlife Art (Jackson, WY), NYC Department of Education, U.S. Department of State Art in Embassies Program in Gabon (Africa), Capital One, Citibank, Roanoke College (Salem, VA), and the Berkshire Botanical Garden (Stockbridge, MA), in addition to a spectrum of private collections around the globe such as Beth Rudin DeWoody and the William Lim Living Collection (Hong Kong, China).

Gerakaris has also created many large-scale public commissions awarded by Cornell Tech, The Surrey Hotel, Bergdorf Goodman, and the Berkshire Botanical Garden, in addition to a permanent public art commission through the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program spanning 116ft at PS101K (Brooklyn, NY).

Having received distinctions such as The Nature Conservancy’s Andy Warhol Preserve Residency Grant and the EcoArt Project Award, his artwork has been exhibited internationally at the Museum of Arts and Design, the Hudson River Museum, the Bronx Museum, the National Museum of Wildlife Art, the Whatcom Museum, the James Museum, the Bruce Museum, Wave Hill, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Google NYC, FX Collaborative, Chinese Contemporary (Beijing), Carol Corey Fine Art (Kent, CT), the Berkshire Botanical Garden, the National Academy of Fine Arts, and the Mykonos Biennale, along with various art fairs such as Scope, Doors (Seoul) and Art on Paper New York. His work has also been featured in publications like Architectural Digest, the Financial Times, the New York Times, and W Magazine.

The artist currently enjoys creating a wide range of site-specific and large-scale commissions for various collections, while preparing for various solo projects and exhibits in NYC and Washington DC. Additionally, Gerakaris has volunteered for two terms on Cornell University’s College of Architecture, Art, & Planning Alumni Advisory Council and is also an avid guitarist.

Peter D. Gerakaris’ artwork tickles the retina and mind by filtering a broad array of Nature-Culture themes through a kaleidoscopic, global lens. In this space where nature and culture converge, the artist passionately seeks to bridge our profound disconnect with the environment. The artist’s distinctive interdisciplinary visual language is grounded in handmade processes that span painting, murals, mosaics, large-scale public installations, works on paper, printmaking, and origami sculptures.

The artist’s dynamic use of color is essential to his work: it arouses feeling and tension by pushing the limits of our color perception beyond the boundaries of pictorial composition. Whether synthesizing traditional gold leafing techniques with vibrant Neo-Byzantine-brushwork in the “Icon Series” — which transposes endangered and exotic species from around the globe as the iconographic characters of our contemporary natural environments — or rendering the illusion of collage by hand through his “Post-Pop Botanic”, “Botanic-Topographic”, “AquaVerse”, and “Oculus” strands, the artist constructs imagery like a phantasmagorical collage to represent society’s fragmented relationship with the environment. The complex layering of motifs that form each holistic artwork functions like a glue that seeks to mend this Nature-Culture divide.

"There’s a certain urge we all have to romanticize nature’s creations, whether its wildflowers, rainbows, Bambi, or organic lettuce. As much as I love these things, I also recognize it’s the same force that generates hurricanes, scorpions, and plants like Ricinus – a beautiful, decorative plant that also happens to be toxic. I’ve long been obsessed with this duality – how something so seductive and beautiful could also be poisonous – and what an indifferent power nature truly is."

- Peter Gerakaris

To learn more about artist Peter Gerakaris, please visit www.petergerakaris.com.