Peter Aitkens was born in Montreal in 1951 and began studying art at the Montreal Museum School of Fine Arts in 1970, where he graduated with a Diploma of Fine Arts in 1972. He spent the next five years touring Europe and the Middle East, studying drawing and painting in the academies he visited. From 1989 to 1991 he was on art Sabbatical in Costa Rica where he painted and taught drawing during the two years there. He then returned to live in Montreal with his wife and two children.

 His talent was recognized early on, as he was accorded solo exhibitions upon graduation in 1972 and continues to this day, with his last solo exhibition having taken place in New York in 2006. He has also participated in numerous group shows in the United States, Ontario and the Maritimes, and has been widely collected, by both private and public galleries. The Waddington Gorce Gallery in Montreal and the Atelier J. Lukacs galleries in Toronto and Montreal have represented him.  His paintings are represented at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, among many other corporate and institutional collections.

His style is highly rendered, sensitive and realistic in its representations of the landscape and the human figure. Often, The almost life-size characters are at one with the natural surroundings in which they are placed. He mostly works in acrylics either on canvas or on board.

Main Collections
Alberta Gas/Nova, Alberta Petroleum Investments, Chevron Standards Ltd, Century International, Contemporary Art Museum of Montreal, Costa Rica’s Ministry of Culture, Edper Investments Ltd., Ernst & Young , Hotel Los Tahibos in Bolivia, Karhu Canada Inc., Irving Oil, Medical Council of Canada, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Northwest, Alaskan Pipeline, Ottawa Congress Center, The Bram Garber Collection, Via Rail

The artist’s work has also been featured in many commercial gallery across Canada.