Biography - Jim Peterson

Jim Peterson

Sedona artist Jim Peterson has a passion for rich, superbly detailed images of the natural world. He articulates his personal vision through a singular blend of classic photographic methods and state-of-the-art digital techniques. He hopes to help preserve our natural legacy by fostering wider appreciation of the intricate beauty in the fragile ecosystems that surround us.

Jim's body of work includes small, intimate portraits of wild beings as well as majestic, room-sized landscapes and panoramas, plus the occasional abstract or experimental composition. He accepts commissions for unique, one-of-a-kind creations, and is available for a limited number of personal or family portrait sessions, weddings, and commercial assignments.

Jim grew up in northwestern New Mexico, where he developed a lifelong attachment to the illuminated spaces and sculpted forms of the Southwest. His interest in photography arose mainly from a desire to record and interpret that vista. Although he is mostly self-taught, he received valuable early guidance from the late Byron Shurtleff of the University of Delaware, as well as from his brother, Brian H. Peterson (a noted photographer, curator, and author), with whom he continues to share techniques and compare notes and images.

He has taken a few detours in life, including living on both coasts (in California and Delaware) as well as in Illinois, Texas, and Missouri. He earned two degrees (a BA in Music and a PhD in Biochemistry) from the University of Chicago, but after his postdoctoral work he left the academic world for a long and varied career in telecommunications and computers (also mostly self-taught). He worked at Bell Labs in Illinois and then at GTE Communication Systems in Phoenix for over two decades. In the midst of all that, his hyperactive right brain persisted in churning out the stream of ideas and visions embodied in his works.

His art is firmly rooted in his love for the sublime light and quiet shadows of the American West. In recent years he has broadened his range of works by exploring a fanciful world of abstract and altered images. But even when working in this realm, he remains true to his fascination with the ways that light’s infinite variability reveals – and endlessly alters - the universe of forms, colors, textures, and emotions in which we are forever immersed.