Peter Curling

Peter Curling was born in Waterford in 1955. From an early age he showed an interest in drawing and held his first exhibition in Lambourn aged fourteen. Two years later he had an exhibition in Combridges in Dublin during Horse show week.

 

He studied classical drawing with the famous signorina Simi in Florence from 1972 to 1974 and spent a short but valuable time with John Skeaping R. A. in France.

His family had moved to England in 1963 and he returned to live in Ireland in 1975.

 

Best known from an early age as a painter of horses , he exhibited regularly with The Tryon gallery in London and also showed his work in The U.S.A., in Saratoga and Kentucky.

More recently he has had successful exhibitions in Dublin in 2005 and 2019. At the moment he is working towards another show in The Architectural Archive in Dublin’s Merrion Square in November 2025. This exhibition will include several bronzes by his wife Louise Wood. 

He has exhibited at The R.H.A. and The Royal Society of Portrait Painters in London.

 

He knows horses well, having spent his life surrounded by them and he continues to paint large atmospheric paintings of them at exercise, in the field and on the racecourse.

 

In recent years he has diversified and now also paints landscapes, interiors and portraits. He has brought his paints to Venice, Tuscany and Provence and he enjoys the challenge of capturing the individual characteristics of these unique places.

 

He has recently completed his first novel Drawing the Line. 

 

He and his wife Louise moved to Wicklow in 2023, having lived in Tipperary for over thirty years. He has three children and seven grandchildren