Jonet Harley-Peters - "Particles VII" 2025
acrylic on canvas
14 cm x 14cm
Jonet Harley-Peters is a London-based contemporary artist associated with Blackhorse Lane Studios in Walthamstow, East London, where she works as part of the Barbican Arts Group Trust (BAGT) artist community.
Her work is rooted in observations of the natural world and combines photomontage with geometric abstraction pigment-based mediums. Harley-Peters describes herself as being strongly influenced by symmetry and pattern flaging natural forms such as plants, water and earth through changing light and shadow.
Part of her childhood was spent in East Africa, while the rest was spent near Dartmoor in South West England. She says these contrasting landscapes deeply shaped her visual language; “Africa gave me colour, pattern and red earth – while Dartmoor was full of mood, mist and water.”
Her artistic process often begins with photography. She photographs details from nature, cuts and reconstructs fragments into new compositions, then combines them with geometric structures such as circles and triangles. She works with raw pigments, pastel and layered photographic imagery to create textured, floating relief works.
She explains; “I take photographs and cut shapes to produce fragments and then take what I need to reconstruct to make a new ‘version’ and tell a new story.”
Her use of circles developed from an interest in holistic and universal symbolism, while later visits to India inspired the introduction of triangular forms and references to the Buddhist/Hindu philosophical idea of “Indra’s Net,” a metaphor for interconnected consciousness.
Harley-Peters studied at; South Devon College of Art and Leeds City College of Art.
Her work has been exhibited widely in galleries, hospitals and public spaces including; William Morris Gallery, Pump House Gallery, Battersea Arts Centre and the Whitworth Gallery.