Vale Peter John Courtney (1932 – 2024)

Peter Courtney studied architecture at Sydney University, graduating in 1957. He travelled to the USA where he worked for over 6 years in 3 quite different architectural firms in Boston. Returning to Canberra in 1963, Peter set-up his own practice, Hancock, Courtney & Renfree. They mainly designed houses in the many new suburbs springing up in the ACT in the 1960-70’s.

In 1967 Peter designed an unusual style of house for the Canberra suburbs in Deakin for Dr Graeme and wife Margaret Heap. It is featured in the book “100 Canberra Houses—A Century of Capital Architecture”.

In 1969, Peter was persuaded to join John Andrews in Palm Beach (Sydney) to become a partner in the firm John Andrews International which designed large projects such as the government Cameron Offices in Canberra, the American Express Tower in Sydney, and the very large Intelsat headquarters in Washington, D.C.

On his 50th birthday, April 25,1982, Peter Courtney permanently retired from architectural practice and turned to his deep passion and talent—drawing and painting. He established Barrenjoey Art School at home as well as an “Art in the Environment” course at Ku-ring-gai College of Advanced Education. During those years, Peter also produced a book with accompanying video of art instruction titled “Art Class: An Introduction to Drawing & Watercolour Painting”.

In 1989, Peter retired from teaching art to devote all his time to his own work and in that year held his first solo exhibition, “From Barrenjoey to Kakadu” at Wycombe Galleries in Sydney.