Welcome to the online art and illustration portfolio of Peter Hollinghurst.

I am a freelance digital artist and illustrator based in the UK (but available for international work as well).

I use a digital technique to produce what I like to call 'hybrids' or 'micro transparency collages'. While there are aspects of digital photo-montage to my artwork it actually goes far beyond a simply cut and paste approach and perhaps in the end has far more collage in the result. I use photo-montage as a base and then build up parts of the image using tiny pieces of colours and textures blended together by altering their transparency. The textures and colours merge together to create new ones - 'hybrids' of the component parts.

It is actually a technique borrowed from early experiments in creating composite photographs for use in criminology pioneered by Sir Francis Galton - while I am not exactly a fan of his ideas on Eugenics his photographic experiments have proved very productive for me in finding a method of creating digital art that reflects both my oil painting techniques and my ideal creative approach.

Where Sir Francis Galton's experiments were a dead end (rather than finding a universal 'criminal type' as he had hoped, he ended up just creating very average and generic portraits) the precise control I get through careful image selection and blending can be very powerful. Yet the techniques I use also allow for the interplay of the subconscious through chance juxtapositions which enables the resulting image to discover itself as a synthesis of conscious planning and subconscious accident. The generic becomes the archetypal and the average becomes the extraordinary.