Peter Benjamin Graham

Peter Benjamin Graham (4 June 1925 – 15 April 1987), was an Australian visual artist, a master craftsman in a variety of printing techniques, and an art theorist. Peter saw no contradiction between abstract and figurative art. He just used them as alternative methods of exploring a subject.

In 1954, Graham began to explore native Australian wildlife (notably Kangaroos) and themes associated with Aboriginal culture, using the visual languages of European figurative Modernism and later geometric abstraction.

He began developing a new form of visual geometry related to Chaos Theory from 1960, eventually called Thematic Orchestration. This new visual language enabled the 2D deconstruction and synthesis of an observed subject, in a way fundamentally different from traditional abstraction. Thematic Orchestration allows the artist to 'grow' an image, producing almost infinite conscious invention.

In 1964 Graham began developing the world's first high level visual notation system for pure visual imagery, which he first called Notation Painting and later New Epoch Art. This notation system enabled the composition of animated visual images in any physical media, and separated the act of composition from the act of painting itself. In effect it does for painting what writing does for the spoken word and thought, and what staff notation does for music. Peter worked on the New Epoch Project until his death in 1987, when it was continued by his sons Philip Mitchell Graham and Euan Benjamin Graham.

Graham became a pioneer of the Australian artist run initiative movement, running The Queensberry Street Gallery in association with Victorian Printmakers' Group from 1973 until 1978.

In 2006 Peter Graham's 1945 painting Peter Lalor Addressing the Miners Before Eureka featured in a major Australian travelling exhibition celebrating the 150 anniversary of the Eureka Stockade This painting is also featured in Riot or Revolution, a dramatised history documentary on the Eureka Stockade directed by Don Parham and produced by Parham Media Productions in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2005.