His passion for painting the female figure has remained constant for the past 30 years, but the materials he incorporates into his work have changed. His work, he says, has to do with the “tension” between a man and a woman in a confined space, and also the tension and energy he creates on the surface of the canvas. There is always a lot going on in Peters’ work, which explores the intimacy and the private lives of his subjects. The paintings may have two nude, or partially clad figures in the composition. If it includes only one subject, Peters says, “I, the painter, or the viewer become that second person.”

In addition to provocative and sometimes mysterious images, which lead you into what he calls “small, almost claustrophobic rooms,” and sometimes onto rumpled beds, are his robust, often gritty, surfaces and the materials he adds, which multiply the tension of the image. As for that tension, he says, it may sometimes just be narrative. But the surface of the painting must also be activated. Using canvas stretched over plywood, he has a hard surface, onto which he can sand, cut, scrape, and add a photograph and cover it with glass. His interest in integrating photographs into his art has occurred over the last five years as he and his wife, Kathline Carr, work together on the photos.

Peters doesn’t use brushes, preferring spackle knives, palette knives, and his fingers; the surface of his work is robustly textured. He may also add a real object, as in Shrine of the Annunciation, into which he inset tomato paste cans to shape a lighthouse. That creates a tension between the three-dimensionality of the cans and the illusionistic three dimensions in the painting.

“When I start a piece I have no idea where it will go. I use no photos or preliminary drawings or models,” he says. The paintings are “evolutionary. I don’t work from a source. I work totally out of my head. Every day I go into the studio, I may have a different feeling. I may be happy, may be sad. There are a lot of different feelings.”