The Peter Mayer Experience

Exhibition at Diamond Hollow Books

ANDES — Once upon a time, Manhattan was a mix of neighborhoods, as Peter Mayer explains his experience of growing up in NYC. He describes it as being “Families of different ethnic backgrounds living in specific neighborhoods - considered good or bad. Rich and poor - those in the middle. I guess I was in the lower middle, but I discovered that the island upon which I lived was full of great things - outside my immediate neighborhood.”  As a child, Mayer set out to explore the marvels of the city thus discovering the Metropolitan Museum of Art (MOMA).  This was to be a significant discovery that would help shape his life as he explains, “Back then, it was pretty empty on weekdays, not too crowded on weekends and admission was always free. So, I got to spend time with great artworks, as if they were mine, but they were stored there in a safe space. I would always leave the Met feeling empowered.  It is said, “All you have to do is stand before great art and it will reveal itself to you.” I did and it did.” Great works of art affect everyone differently. 

Mayer went on to explain how he doesn’t understand how people can zip through a crowded museum and not take the time to fully appreciate the craftsmanship and emotion that artists choose to share with the world. Mayer, living mostly on the upper east side of Manhattan, had been working on his skills as an artist by the time he was in his young teens. A friend of his approached him, as he reflected back, “When I was 13, a family friend said, ‘You are an artist’ and took me to an art opening. So we went, it was in Little Italy near Soho. It was a storefront that was rented by a group of artists who used it for art shows and as a place to hang out. The artists and partners put out food and drink, and I saw abstract and strange conceptual works, things I would see in galleries years later. They teased me, “Oh you’re an artist!” and laughed at me, “You’ve chosen the path of craziness.” That I already knew, we all laughed and drank together. I knew I’d made the right choice. Amongst those I met was Robert DeNiro’s father, an abstract painter”.

By the time Mayer started attending school for art, he had grown disinterested in the daily routine of many people chattering on about tv shows and neighborhood gossip. While working on his artwork on a rooftop, as he tells it, “I had an idea and started painting nude women sunbathing. I knew it could catch on with the news helicopters, but it did require vandalizing 7-8 buildings. I knew I had to do it. I would not tell anyone; I got up early and discretely made my marks, made them all blond because it only required one color paint and would read well on television. My goal was to paint 100 and call it 100 blondes. Two weeks passed, I would go up to paint whenever the weather permitted and ended up with 88. I was at the Art Students League on a Friday night, drawing from the figure and wondering what happened with the blondes. The next morning, I met a neighbor on the sidewalk - he was grinning - they had been on TV. “What was I doing sneaking around on the roof?” “How was it?” I asked; he said it was on the 6 o’clock news for NBC with Lloyd Kramer.”

This led to Mayer painting graffiti style dogs. Now off the rooftops and into the streets, people began to notice his work, “A few days later, I saw spray paint near the heliport - a Samo (Basquiat) style tag saying -Bring the doggies downtown.“ Mayer had been tagging in the same neighborhood as Basquiat, it seemed to be a territorial signal which Mayer respected and took full advantage of the suggestion. Mayer began doing his dog paintings on buildings in some of the better neighborhoods of Chelsea and Soho. With the continued exposure on Page Six of the Daily News, Mayer says Andy Warhol had taken notice of his work. The delightful guidance of Basquiat helped Mayer do gallery showings on Madison Ave and throughout Soho, “At around this time I met Keith Haring, (by that time quite sick) who told me, ‘There are too many temptations in the art world’ and I saw that was true, things coming my way through the dogs and the art scene… Now that Haring, Basquiat and Richard Hambleton are dead, I see in retrospect, the danger of the temptations in NYC and the art world in particular.” explains Mayer.  

With the increased popularity of Mayer and his work, he began to feel tension with his friends and family. This experience prompted him to escape to upstate New York and land in Andes, as he tells it, “Fast forward to the past few years, I have re-engaged with the dogs, now to be found on buildings in the central Catskills. Life in the mountains, along with working with the Andes Academy of Art and Diamond Hollow, has led me to rethink my relationship with art, and I have concluded that, as important as NYC is, one can continue to grow and create as an artist well beyond the borders of the city.”

‘Peter Mayer is a faberge egg, when cracked it’s filled with LSD’ ~ Steve Burnett (Bovina Farmer)

Peter Mayer is currently showing an exhibition of his abstract artwork, mostly multi-media collage pieces, at the Diamond Hollow Bookstore. His 2024 show, Silent Music, refers to the visual ‘lyricality’ of Mayer’s work, as well as the influence of rock music that infuses his work. The pieces installed for the show are both an outgrowth and an inversion of his 2023 exhibit Ontological Union in which he transformed a former plumbing shop into an immersive environment that artist Sharon Horvath described as “a glittering man-girl-cave” in which “nostalgia, reverence, revelry, and contempt bounce around reflective walls” in a “grand collage of collages.” Mayer’s goal of “transporting viewers into a different time and space” was realized for many of the visitors in an experience that was both psychedelic and spiritual. Mayer also hosts a show on WIOX radio on Monday nights from 10 pm – Midnight. For more information see, on Instagram @graffitidogofsoho and @diamondhollowbooks 

The Mountain Eagle would like to express our deepest condolences to Peter Mayer for the recent passing of his wife Bobbi Jarrow.