Meet Pieter
Welcome to my website.
Pieter Lefferts is a visual artist, author, teacher and musician, who draws deeply from the well of the natural world for creative inspiration. Over the years he has sought deeper communion with Nature to find balance and better understand himself and the world around him. He eschews perfection and instead embraces authenticity and intentionality, wherein perfection unfolds as the sum of the parts of an idea explored, and life lived.
Pieter is a student of shamanism, indigenous wisdom, science, and natural history, which, in lively combination, inform his artistic process. He is a lover of stories and people and strives to live his life with humor, grace, and a reliable Adirondack guide boat from which to paint.
His award-winning artwork is in national and international collections, prominent and humble. He has received numerous awards for his artistry and as an arts educator. Litchfield Magazine named him one of Litchfield County’s 50 Most Influential People of 2012.
Widely collected, his work has been juried into the renowned Pastel Society of America’s annual ‘Enduring Brilliance’ exhibition in New York City and the Northeast National Pastel Exhibition in Old Forge, NY, in which he received the Lee Award for artistic excellence. He exhibits in group shows throughout the region, including Keene Arts in Keene, NY. His recent solo exhibit at the DM Hunt Library in Falls Village, CT, included an Earth Day reading from his award-winning novel, What The Kek Kek Saw, a fable published by UnCollected Press in 2022 and chosen as a Nautilus Book Awards Gold Winner for Young Adult Fiction in 2023.
Pieter is the founder of Northlight Art Center, located in Amenia, NY, a venue for aspiring artists to study with him in a professional atelier environment. He is a master teaching artist whose knowledge of techniques and materials, coupled with his wit and wisdom, encourages students of all backgrounds to pursue their personal discovery through making art.
“Some years ago, I was the guest speaker before a senior’s group on a fieldtrip to the art school where I taught. I was asked about my life as an artist in a conversation that ranged from the applied to the philosophical. Midway into the conversation a gentleman, who had been a student of mine at the school, raised his hand with a quizzical look and asked me, “If everything’s already been done, how do I create something that is original?”
“I said to him, and to the group, that I had come to a point in my life, I was in my forties, where I found it more important to be authentic over some striving to be original. “By being authentic,” I said, “if originality happens, it’s an outcome, a byproduct of your intentions and not the goal”, or something like that.
My gentleman student nodded his head in agreement as I went on to field more questions from the group. After ten minutes his hand went up again, with the same furrowed brow, he asked me, “What do you mean by being authentic?”
“What I mean by being authentic,” I said, “is that, for such a long time, I struggled, perplexed with the idea of claiming the label of artist for myself, this most vague of professional titles loaded with assumptions and expectations. What is an artist? Is there a single, simple definition that you’d be satisfied with? For you and others? Not really, is there?”
I decided that I would, from then on, pursue being Pieter, just Pieter, and see what happens. Be me, with all the curiosity and complexity I see and feel, summoning the confidence to embrace the different creative feelings effervescing within me, so that I might do my best to give them voice.”