Interviews From Yale Radio / Artists, Curators And More

Lamar Peterson (b. 1974, St. Petersburg, Florida) is a painter whose work explores the psychological and social space between refuge and exposure. For more than two decades, he has rendered the everyday experiences of Black life with a language that merges stylized figuration, domestic ritual, and surreal distortion. Across both painting and collage, Peterson creates scenes where tranquility and unease coexist: suburban gardens bloom into uncanny environments, rooms soften and dissolve into landscape, and figures pursue moments of rest and care even as the outside world presses near. Peterson’s visual vocabulary ranges from cartoon inflections and bold color to pared-down forms that verge on the symbolic. In his hands, a gesture—cooking a meal, tending a plant, pausing in thought—becomes a quietly radical act of autonomy. His subjects often appear in transitional spaces: windows, thresholds, and gardens that double as emotional terrain, reflecting the fragile distance between sanctuary and scrutiny, vulnerab