San Diego · Mixed media · Working archive
Peter
John Geise
A visual language built from glyphs, figures, fragments, found images, and the productive tension between improvisation and revision.
Enter the working archive
A sustained independent practice
More than four decades of making. Still restless. Still moving.
Geise’s work has moved through juried institutions, library and college galleries, artist-run spaces, solo presentations, and cross-border projects—while remaining unmistakably his own.
San Diego · La Jolla · San Marcos · Valle de Guadalupe
The working catalog
Selected works
Straight-on artwork views from the collection archive and Peter’s artist albums. Select an image for a closer view.
The artist
A life carried forward in paint, line, and collage.
Geise began making art at twelve. Across decades in San Diego, he has built a restless visual world from improvised drawing, painted figures, stamps, fragments of language, and the evidence of revision.
“I employ drawing, painting and collaged material in formal and random or automatic compositions.”
— Peter J. Geise, artist’s statement
Artist and process
Automatic beginnings. Deliberate endings.
Peter John Geise is a San Diego artist whose layered, semi-abstract works combine drawing, painting, collage, and found material. Across more than four decades, he has carried that visual language through formal institutions, independent galleries, community spaces, and cross-border exhibitions without settling into a fixed formula.
Geise often begins without a fixed composition, allowing lines and figures to emerge through an automatic process. Editing follows: forms are repeated, interrupted, labeled, buried, and brought back into view.
His recurring biomorphic figures and glyph-like marks sit beside postage stamps, comics, fragments of language, classic-film imagery, science fiction, graffiti, and the formal vocabulary of twentieth- century abstraction.
Documented milestones
Chronology
A selective chronology based on institutional archives, contemporaneous reporting, gallery records, and preserved exhibition material. The complete exhibition and award history remains under review.
Published context
Selected writing and records
Independent reporting, critical response, and institutional records are labeled separately so visitors can see what each source establishes.
A living record
The Peter Geise Archive is being built in public.
The archive now preserves 260 source photographs across the original collection records and ten artist-supplied albums. This public edition presents 102 selected artwork views alongside portraits, exhibition evidence, published writing, and institutional records.
Original-art and print inquiries will open in a later release after catalog details and availability are confirmed with the artist.
A private contact form will be added here before inquiries open, so visitors can share their own contact details without publishing Peter’s personal email address.