On April 26th and 27th, from 1 to 6 pm, artists in DUMBO will open their doors to the public as part of DUMBO Open Studios, offering a rare look inside the art studios along the Brooklyn waterfront. Since the 1970s, DUMBO has been shaped by its vibrant art community. This interview series highlights a handful of participating artists in 2025. Each response offers a glimpse of what’s waiting behind the studio door. Peter Drake has been in DUMBO since January 2016. Peter Drake’s studio is at 55 Washington Street, #254.
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What will we see in your studio?
I really enjoy opening my studio to the public for Dumbo Open Studios. It’s a chance to reconnect with other artists and friends and meet a wide range of complete strangers. I moved my studio to Dumbo in January 2016 when I was very fortunate to be awarded a studio through the Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy Program. I moved in and haven’t left my 850 sq ft.
I work on multiple pieces at once so you will see paintings from three bodies of work, landscapes, miniature toys and depictions of suburbia. These themes have cycled in and out of my 40 plus years as an artist as I look for the serene, the whimsical and the uncanny. I describe my paintings as Giotto meets Vermeer on the way to David Lynch’s house. Meaning I want the misplaced monumentality like Giotto, the use of traditional painting techniques along with the plausibility of the lens like Vermeer, combined with representations of popular culture that examine the suburban myth like Lynch.
Landscapes have been a great escape for me. My escape has been to New Hampshire and to a small lake that my family has gone to since the 70’s. I started with sketches in 2018 and then moved full-on to large paintings. In the studio you will see a wall of small 12 x 16” landscapes and a nearly completed private commission landscape that is 54 x 96”.
My miniature toy paintings are based on a collection of lead toys I inherited from my father. The toys are chipped, show their age and are world weary, which is what I am drawn to. You will see paintings of soldiers and animals, who in reality are 1.5” tall painted on a much larger scale, divots and all.
Being raised on Long Island, I am a product of the utopian suburban experiment. The burbs are nostalgic for me but I depict the rents in the fabric, the undercurrents that are just below the surface. As they say, “you can take the artist out of the suburbs …”
About the artist: Peter Drake’s work is held in private, corporate and public collections including the Whitney Museum, Phoenix Museum of Art, MOCA LA, the Weatherspoon, L.A. County Museum, Microsoft, Kirkland & Ellis and the Progressive Collection.
Drake is represented by Linda Warren Projects, Chicago, Healy Contemporaneo, San Miguel de Allende, and Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas. He has received a NEA Award, a NYFA Fellowship and the Two Trees Cultural Space Subsidy Program Grant. Waiting for Toydot, Drake’s MTA Arts & Design public art commission for the LIRR Massapequa Train Station features 18 art glass windows and 5 mosaics and is seen by over 7,000 commuters daily. Drake is the Provost at the New York Academy of Art, a progressive figurative and representational graduate art school in Tribeca and he actively lectures, writes and curates. Peter Drake was raised in Garden City, Long Island and lives in Manhattan. @peterdrakeart