WHAT LINGERS BENEATH: A Dialogue In Layers by Peter Scherrer

DHV ARTWORKS is honored to present What Lingers Beneath, the first solo exhibition in Dallas by Swiss-born, Los Angeles-based artist Peter Scherrer. Through richly layered abstract paintings and a limited series of miniature drawings titled Ducky Doodles, Scherrer invites viewers into a world shaped by memory, intuition, and the delicate interplay between structure and emotion.

Rooted in a deep respect for the tactile, physical process of making, Scherrer’s practice explores the psychological dimensions of human experience: the fading edges of recollection, the architecture of perception, and the residue of lived emotion. His works straddle the line between the seen and the felt, the carefully constructed and the impulsively revealed.

A Foundation in Yellow

Each of Scherrer’s paintings begins the same way: with a layer of yellow. For the artist, yellow is more than a color—it’s a mindset. It is associated with light, optimism, and creative energy. This intentional chromatic foundation provides both a literal and symbolic grounding for the complex visual journey that follows.

From there, the painting emerges through a deeply intuitive process of layering, scraping, erasing, and rebuilding. Unlike artists who map their compositions in advance, Scherrer approaches the canvas as a space for discovery. The act of painting becomes an excavation—revealing hidden marks, burying others, and ultimately arriving at a balance between presence and absence, control and release.

This method results in surfaces that feel aged and weathered, but alive—each painting an emotional landscape, with visual cues echoing memory’s nonlinear, fragmentary nature. Just as memories come in waves—some sharp, others distant—Scherrer’s layers oscillate between clarity and obscurity, permanence and change.

Between Intuition and Structure

One of the hallmarks of Scherrer’s work is its negotiation between spontaneous gesture and quiet design. While the paintings are gestural and expressive on the surface, many are built upon an underlying grid or structural rhythm—sometimes visible, often hidden beneath layers of pigment. This reflects Scherrer’s early training and successful career in graphic design, where structure, alignment, and balance are paramount.

In the pre-digital design world where Scherrer began, designers worked with physical tools: straight edges, pens, X-Acto knives, adhesive wax, and paste-up boards. There was a precision and tactility to the work—designers “got dirty,” as Scherrer puts it. That experience continues to shape how he composes: there’s a certain restraint in the chaos, an invisible scaffolding behind the energy.

But it’s also important to note that Scherrer is not bound by the grid. Instead, he lets it exist as a suggestion—something to push against or weave through. In many ways, his relationship to structure mirrors his relationship to memory and life experience: both orderly and unpredictable, both traceable and elusive.

A Global Perspective: From Zürich to San Pedro

Peter Scherrer was born and raised in a small village outside Zürich, Switzerland. His early exposure to European art and culture grounded his visual language in both classical sensibility and modernist experimentation. Yet Scherrer felt drawn to something less polished—something more spontaneous, textured, and alive.

In the early 1990s, he left Europe for Los Angeles with little more than a duffel bag and a handwritten note telling him to visit the Rainbow Bar on Sunset Strip. L.A. was foreign territory, full of contradictions and creative potential. It was a place where rock-and-roll collided with multiculturalism, where the desert met the ocean, and where artists were free to reinvent themselves.

Scherrer enrolled at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, earning his BFA in 1992 and his MFA in 1995. While his professional path first led him into graphic design, he remained committed to painting in the background. Eventually, the pull of the studio became too strong to ignore. He returned to painting full-time, bringing with him a designer’s sense of form, space, and economy—and a global perspective shaped by his life across two continents.

Today, Scherrer lives and works in San Pedro, a working-class harbor town and historic artist enclave within the City of Los Angeles. San Pedro offers a slower, quieter rhythm that suits his creative process, yet it is also home to a diverse, international population and an undercurrent of artistic experimentation. Daily life, chance encounters, music, and travel all inform his studio practice.

Material as Memory

Scherrer’s paintings are made primarily with acrylic on canvas, but his process is anything but conventional. He layers paint with brushes, knives, scrapers, and even found objects, creating surfaces that feel simultaneously spontaneous and ancient. He often sands or wipes down areas of the canvas to reveal earlier layers, allowing past decisions to remain visible in the present composition.

This layering and erasure create a kind of visual archaeology, where the history of the painting is embedded in its surface. The result is a richly textured, emotionally charged body of work that rewards slow looking. A seemingly chaotic swath of color might contain a whisper of a shape beneath it. A dense field of brushstrokes might resolve into a subtle rhythm or pattern. There is always something more just beneath the surface—something that lingers.

The Ducky Doodles: Humor and Humanity

In addition to his large-scale abstract paintings, What Lingers Beneath features a special installation of Ducky Doodles, a series of 5x7-inch works on paper that began during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Initially conceived as a daily sketching ritual to stay grounded and lighthearted during an anxious time, the Ducky Doodles quickly gained a cult following. Each drawing features a duck—sometimes pensive, sometimes absurd, sometimes dressed in elaborate costume—rendered with wit, tenderness, and surprising depth.

Far from being a novelty or side project, the Ducky Doodles reflect a different facet of Scherrer’s artistry: his openness to humor, his observational sensitivity, and his belief in the value of small, daily acts of creativity. Like his paintings, they are driven by instinct and emotion—but here, the emotion is often joy.

For this exhibition, DHV ARTWORKS is pleased to present 50 original Ducky Doodles, all available for purchase. These miniatures have sold out in every previous showing, and we are thrilled to bring them to collectors in Dallas.

Emotional Cartography: Navigating the Unseen

Peter Scherrer’s work invites us to slow down. In a world saturated with fast images, his paintings ask us to look again, and then again—to notice what we may have missed, to feel what we didn’t expect to feel. His work does not depict memory; it enacts it. Through repeated gestures, buried layers, and unresolved spaces, Scherrer maps the emotional terrain of the human experience.

There is a deep intelligence in his process, but it is not intellectual in the cold, detached sense. Rather, it is an intelligence born of listening—to materials, to environment, to inner states. His paintings, like memories, are not fixed. They are open-ended, alive, and subject to change.

In this way, What Lingers Beneath is not simply a show of abstract paintings. It is a meditation on how we carry things forward—marks, feelings, ideas, histories. It is about the subtle undercurrents that move beneath our conscious awareness, shaping how we see and how we are seen.

About the Artist

Peter Scherrer was born outside Zürich, Switzerland, and has lived and worked in Los Angeles since the early 1990s. He earned his BFA and MFA from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and enjoyed a successful career in graphic design before transitioning to full-time painting. He currently maintains a studio in San Pedro, California.

His work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions throughout Southern California, including the Swiss Consulate in Los Angeles and The Ranch, curated by Eric Johnson. His paintings and Ducky Doodles are held in private and corporate collections across the U.S. and Europe.

Scherrer is represented in Texas exclusively by DHV ARTWORKS.

Exhibition Details

Peter Scherrer: What Lingers Beneath, A Dialogue In Layers

June 21 - August 2, 2025

DHV ARTWORKS

2835 Irving Blvd, Dallas, TX 75207

Gallery Hours: Mon–Fri 11 AM – 4 PM | Sat 12 PM – 4 PM

Free and open to the public

For sales inquiries, private appointments, or press information, visit www.dhvartworks.com or contact deborah@dhvartworks.com.