(LENOX, Mass.) – Reinventing Rockwell, a solo show featuring works by Pops Peterson, reinterprets Norman Rockwell’s artwork with contemporary views on politics, social issues, and technology. The exhibition is on view at Sohn Fine Art Gallery now through Sunday, March 15, with a reception on Saturday, March 7, 2015, from 4 to 6:30 pm.
Reimagining Norman Rockwell’s imagery and social issues in the 21st Century, Peterson explores roles of gender, ethnicities, sexuality and attitude. Using his surrounding environment in the Berkshires, as Rockwell did, Peterson presents pious, joyful and controversial imagery that effectively evokes the evolution of society from the 1940s and ‘50s to the current day.

Peterson’s personal updates to Rockwell’s iconic images of the Thanksgiving Dinner and The Runaway ask the viewer to look more deeply at the “Americana” of today. He boldly takes on Rockwell’s political masterpieces, “Freedom from Fear” (retitled “Freedom from What”) and the Civil Rights Era, “The Problem We All Live With”. Peterson’s “Ode to the Pear Trees of Great Barrington” captures a fleeting moment in time in his home town, just as Rockwell’s “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas” did. Continuing his pursuit of recording the environment around him, Peterson’s painterly landscapes of the Berkshires are a departure from the political but still connected to his admiration of the region.

At 62, Pops Peterson is an artist emerging very quickly onto the scene. His successful debut solo exhibition, “New Frontiers in Pop Art,” had the best attended opening in the 18-year history of Lauren Clark Fine Art when it premiered last July. That exhibition came hot off the heels of a commission to create more than three dozen pieces of artwork for CMC Berkshires, in New Marlborough.

In addition to private commissions, Peterson has exhibited at a plethora of locations around the Berkshires, as well as in “Artists Evolved,” an exhibition in New York City. He is currently featured on the cover in the February issue of the Artful Mind Magazine. Peterson is married to Mark Alan Johnson, with whom he owns the salon and day spa, SEVEN salon.spa, in Stockbridge, Mass.

Sohn Fine Art Gallery, 69 Church Street, Lenox, Mass.