Abstract composition

Dr. Peggy Postma (1962) is a painter and academic, born in Montreal, Canada, who lived in Singapore and the Netherlands until 1983, where she studied at the Academy of Art in Rotterdam.

After that, she moved to Britain to continue her art education, settling eventually in London. She gained an honours degree at Exeter College of Art in 1985 and her master’s degree at Birmingham Polytechnic in 1987, followed by a part-time lectureship in painting at Stourbridge College of Art from 1987-1991, and she was visiting lecturer on other fine art degree courses around Britain from 1986.

Postma gained several awards from South West Arts and in 1989 was a finalist in British Airways’ Most Promising Artist Award.

Later in her career as an artist, Postma revealed that she had to side-step her artistic practice to retrain as a Clinical Psychologist. She added that her art hasn’t been completely left behind, that the two careers are inextricably linked because her creative way of thinking makes for a valuable tool in her clinal field.

Horses strongly influenced her paintings and also music is a strong source of inspiration for her work, which tends towards Abstract Expressionism, using a rich palette of colors on large canvases.

Nowadays, many of her works are in the collection of Victoria Gallery & Museum, part of the University of Liverpool. In 1985, Gallery Gooijer Fine Art in Amsterdam organised an exhibition in her name, called ‘Peggy Postma, schilderijen en gouaches’. It is likely that this painting was exhibited there, since I bought it together with some work by Hendrik Gooijer, who was also a painter himself.