Peter Anthony Pryor

Peter Anthony Pryor Jr (born 1955) is an American  visual artist, painter, postmodern neo-expressionist, and  performer.

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Early life and education  

Pryor was born in 1955 in Norfolk, Virginia, to Peter Pryor  Sr. and Joanne Roefs. He grew up in foster care from 4  years old to 13. He is the oldest of five siblings. Pryor  initially majored in humanities. In his first two years of  college, Pryor took a few electives in the fine arts. His  professor, Harper T Phillips, encouraged him to pursue  art as a career. Thus, he attended Pratt Institute in  Brooklyn, New York, and graduated with a bachelor’s  degree in fine arts in 1981 and later completed his  master’s in 1993. While studying at Pratt Institute, Pryor  became a teaching assistant in his second year for a year.  He taught sculpture and 3D foundation courses. 

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Pryor's interest in flims was frist inspired by a lecture given by visiting artist Robert Whitman, who also incorporated film projections in many of his  performances. He later worked with Robert Whitman on his performance called, "Stound" performed  on Staten Island in the Snug Harbor. He was also influenced by Nick Zedd, Scott and Beth B, CY  Twombly, Philip Guston, Ida Applebrog, Keith Haring, Jean Michel Basquiat, and by the early no-wave  movement on the lower east side of New York City. 

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Pryor returned to Pratt Institute to complete his MFA from 1990 to 1993 with an MFA in painting. His  work was selected along with 13 other thesis show artists curated and selected by Jay Gorney Modern  Art (Jay Gorney guest curator) in 1992 with an exhibit at the Puck building in New York City. 

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Career  

Pryor started working in 1974 as an apprentice to Hungarian-born sculptor John H Seymour building  his ceramic modernist sculptures and working with him for several years before moving to Brooklyn to  attend Pratt Institute. 

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Beginning in 1980, Pryor moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, one of just a handful of an artist at the time  to move into industrial spaces, many abandoned and considered at the time to be a perilous neighborhood. This was more than a decade before artists by the hundreds would relocate and  establish Williamsburgh as an art district, resulting in it being one of the foremost artist districts known  throughout the country. Pryor, in addition to art performances, installations, and painting, worked with  super eight films, often employing film images projected on the sides of abandoned buildings of fires,  subways riding across the tops of the buildings, as well as short reels used in live performances like  "Hey I’m a monument" in the Gowanus Monumental show of 1982. Later continuing using film images  CBGBs with the Peter Pryor Show and other venues like pyramid club, using images of burned-out ghettos to images of wall street and businessmen with briefcases as familiar topics.

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During Pryor’s early career living in Williamsburg, he received an opportunity to make a film for a  European show called " Underground Filmmakers of New York and Los Angles," curated by Anabarb  Kauv. Pryor made a short film 20 min called "Convertible City," again creating and collaborating with  musicians, looped recordings found sounds layer vocals. This further inspired more experimental  recordings of looped sounds, rhythms, and layer vocals. During the early 80s, while living in  Williamsburg, Pryor was one of the organizers of the first-ever art show in another empty building  around the corner from his Berry Street loft called the "All Fools show." The show included the upper  two floors covering approx 20,000 sq ft of space open to hundreds of artists at the time. Making  Williamsburg a desirable place for artists to live and work. 

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Working with film opens other doors as well. Pryor often had to create his soundtracks for films, this led  to an interest in found sounds, looped together with simple rhythms with layered vocals. So it was no  surprise when he created his first record, "Redspot," that one review in the East Village Eye described Redspot as "Vaguely rap sounding, and a little reminiscent of Disney animal movie soundtrack." 

 

With the support of a former employer where he had worked as a production assistant for an advertising  agency Ross Enterprises, Jan Ross offered to support a recording project with Pryor after hearing  "Redspot.” Pryor then hired a producer Robert Aaron to help produce the "Opportunity Project" The first  release was "Social Diseases," a promotional episode with several songs to be released later the  following year. Pryor began performing live shows backed with film and media images and some local  musicians on the downtown scene. 

While Pryor’s career continued making art, installations, and performances, Pryor’s brother, Paul, returned from France with AIDS. Pryor's parents had abandoned Paul, as well as his brother and sister, from his father’s previous marriage, so Pryor became the caretaker of Paul. The practical result, in  addition to the loss of his brother, Pryor decided, since he had to stay home often as a caretaker, was  to move more toward paintings as a practical matter. While he did do more performances, the recording  project was discontinued. His brother died in the summer of 1987. 

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In 1988, a year after his brother’s death, Pryor moved to Woodstock, New York. He joined the  Woodstock Artist Association (WAA). He was an artist in residence in 1989 at the Burr House. Pryor  continued working and living in Woodstock from 1988 to 2000, showing in New york city and the Hudson Valley, working on performances / installations like "Flags On Line." Pryor continues working and  exhibiting paintings. He moved from Brooklyn, New York to the Hudson Valley where he has a studio  and continues to work on his painting.