The Art of Charles L Peterson

Charles L. Peterson was born and raised in Elgin, Illinois. His childhood was a happy mix of life in that small city and many long visits to his grandparent’s rural Illinois farm. He was the third son of Swedish immigrants who stressed values such as hard work, honesty and duty to one’s community that strongly influence his life to this day. He fondly remembers his childhood being filled with sandlot baseball games, delivering papers on his bicycle, and being very involved in the Boy Scouts achieving Eagle Scout status and leading a contingent of scouts trained in American Indian dance to the Jamboree in Paris France. He was an excellent student and participated in a wide variety of activities including wrestling, band, drama performances and student council president. He was particularly fond of outdoor activities and spent many a summer corralling horses and canoeing at Camp Big Timber. Beyond all of this though, Chick (his lifelong nickname) found a great deal of satisfaction in expressing himself through drawings and although he didn’t begin to dream of his love of drawing as a viable career until many years later, it was with these first drawings, mostly of horses, cowboys, and Indians, that his interest in painting began.