A Lifetime in the Landscape: P. S. Moore Explores Home, Memory and Nature in Home Stretch

October 17, 2026 – January 17, 2027
The Art Gallery of Peterborough

For nearly 60 years, artist P. S. Moore has walked the same trails near his home in Assumption, just south of Peterborough. Along the way, he has watched the seasons change, the landscape evolve and the natural world quietly carry on around him. Those decades of observation are at the heart of Home Stretch, an exhibition at the Art Gallery of Peterborough that celebrates the enduring relationship between an artist and the land he calls home.

At the centre of that relationship is a drumlin, a gently sloping geological formation left behind by retreating glaciers more than 10,000 years ago. Its long, curved silhouette dominates the landscape surrounding the small hamlet of Assumption, providing a familiar landmark through generations of change.

For Moore, who has lived in the area since 1967, that ancient ridge is more than a geographical feature. It’s a constant presence, a reference point against which the passing seasons and the passage of a lifetime can be measured.

Just east of the drumlin lies a wetland and forest trail that Moore has explored almost daily for decades. It’s a place of remarkable biodiversity, where the smallest details of plant and animal life coexist with the larger rhythms of weather, light and seasonal transformation.

Those observations form the foundation of Home Stretch, a visual exploration of two neighbouring landscapes: one seemingly permanent and monumental, the other fragile and continually reshaped by heat, wind, ice, drought and rain.

The exhibition also brings together Moore’s imagery with fragments of poetry by Hollay Ghadery, the award-winning Iranian-Canadian writer and current Poet Laureate of Scugog, Ontario.

Their collaboration creates what is known as an ekphrastic work, where visual art and literary expression respond to and enrich one another. The result is something of a love poem to the landscape, told through images and words that reflect both its enduring beauty and its vulnerability.

Moore’s relationship with art extends well beyond his own studio.

A graduate of the University of Guelph with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, he has spent much of his career combining artistic practice with education and mentorship. Through his work with young people, he has developed arts programs supported by the Ontario Arts Council, encouraging students to discover new ways of expressing themselves through creative exploration.

From 2019 to 2022, Moore served as Artist Educator in Residence at Toronto’s Beverley School, working with students in Grades 1 through 6 as part of a collaborative program supporting children with multiple exceptionalities.

He has also been an active contributor to Peterborough’s arts community, including serving as Chairman of the Board at Artspace, one of Canada’s longest-running artist-run centres.

His work has appeared in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Seams and Strata at the Art Gallery of Peterborough in 2023 and the 2022 Circus Repurpose / Erring at King George multi-arts festival.

In 2016, Moore presented song of the cataract, a site-specific installation at the Art Gallery of Peterborough that transformed the gallery’s lower ramp into an imagined river flowing toward Little Lake.

Working across painting, printmaking, sculpture and stage design, Moore has consistently explored the relationship between personal identity and the environments that shape us.

With Home Stretch, that exploration becomes particularly intimate. Rather than searching for inspiration in distant places, Moore turns his attention to the landscape outside his own door, finding meaning in the familiar details that many of us pass without a second glance.

After almost six decades of walking the same paths, he’s still discovering something worth looking at.

P. S. Moore’s Home Stretch is presented at the Art Gallery of Peterborough, offering a thoughtful exploration of landscape, memory and the extraordinary beauty of an ordinary daily walk.