Robert Peterson (b.1981) is a figurative painter living and working in Lawton, Oklahoma. Peterson's recent paintings depict African-American subjects with minimal backgrounds. In allowing the intricacies of his subjects' poses, dress, and expressions to be the sole focus, Peterson emphasizes the artistic validity of quotidien African-American experiences. Peterson often employs a signature blue tone to his subjects' skin, evoking at once the blues, particularly Louis Armstrong, conceptions of blue-blackness in history and contemporary art, historical concepts like indigo in the transatlantic slave trade or blue vein societies, cultural symbols like blue beads, and more recently the thin blue line. Peterson has shown his work in New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Miami. He is recognized as the first African-American to ever earn the title Artist of the Year in Southwest Oklahoma.
