Peter Nicholls

Peter Clement Fife Nicholls (27 April 1936 – 3 February 2021) was a New Zealand artist who created large, outdoor works. His public art sculptures, often combining steel and native timbers, commented on the New Zealand landscape and its colonial history. Life Nicholls was born in Whanganui, New Zealand in 1936. He was educated at the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts in Christchurch, the Auckland Teachers' College, and the University of Auckland Elam School of Fine Arts. In the 1960s he spent some time as an Auckland high school art teacher. Nicholls was married to the artist Di ffrench for more than thirty years, until her death in 1999. They had four children. In 2001 he married Steph Bate, a registered nurse. He lived and worked in Dunedin, New Zealand. The Dunedin Public Art Gallery presented Journeywork, a major retrospective of Nicholls's career, in 2008. A stroke in 2019 restricted Nicholls' ability to sculpt, though he continued producing smaller-scale works. Nicholls suffered a second stroke in January 2021 from which he never fully recovered. He died in Dunedin on 3 February 2021.