New Eastbourne art gallery launches for artists with a passion

“I just love art,” he explains.

And it’s a passion he looks for in the artists he is working with.

The Patterson Gallery is based in the Alfriston Room at The Lansdowne Hotel, Eastbourne, a specially redesigned gallery space showing a wide range of artworks from Peter’s regular artists. It is open on Saturdays and Sundays from 10am-5pm when Peter will be in attendance. During the week, you can still visit the gallery by approaching the hotel reception staff.

“It's a mixture of pencil and charcoal and drawing and oil and acrylic, and the artists just come to me,” Peter says. “I hang what I like. If I like it, I hang it. I like artists that have painted or drawn what they want to paint or draw. If the artist asks me what is selling, I just say ‘Your art!’ Those are the artists that I want to work with, the ones that have a passion for what they create.

“I would most probably have about 25 pieces on display and that would most probably be about five or six different artists represented but I've got about 25 artists on my books. The artists will change what they're displaying when they want to. I'm fairly laid back about it. But the hardest thing is just getting people in through the door. We are just about managing. I do Facebook and Instagram, and I have an A-board outside but I'm going to get some some flyers printed. It's just about getting people in.”

As for Peter's own career: “I was brought up in a children's home. My Sunday school teacher gave me a job in the printing industry. I got married at 28 and I had the opportunity to go selling print which I did. I went and worked for a company in Basildon as a sales director.”

One day he was asked to take a proof into Channel 4. One conversation led to another and he ended up printing the catalogue for an art gallery: “I became interested in art – so much so that when I was walking through Basildon council offices I saw a painting on the wall. I said to the chief executive ‘Do you know what that is?’ He said ‘Yes, it's a painting.’ I said it was an Ivon Hitchens worth about £45,000. It turned out that they had a collection of art that was worth about £300,000 or £400,000. I put together a catalgoue.”

When Peter was made redundant in 1999, he took a unit in Basildon shopping mall and started showing work from an arts trust: “Local artists came and joined me and after that I thought I'm going to open an art gallery. I opened one in Billericay in 2007.

“Our daughter lives in Polegate and at 40 she had little boy. My wife decided that we were going to move from Essex to Sussex to be near her. We have been here 11 years. I said ‘I'm going to have an art gallery’ and I had one in Alfriston for about three years.”

Now comes the latest venture in Eastbourne.