Peter Maier was born in 1945 in Brooklyn, New York. He worked as a senior automotive designer at General Motors before focusing exclusively on his painting. Peter paints with an automotive paint called Axalta Cromax-AT paint, which allows his work to have a luminosity impossible to capture by traditional means. Peter Maier’s vast photorealist paintings of cars reflect his lifelong fascination with what he considers to be the strongest cultural icon of his time. Maier has worked as a senior designer for Cadillac, Pontiac, and Chevrolet and went on to pioneer the use of automotive paint in fine art. His process of applying multiple layers of color and clear varnish “produces an illusion of depth, surface, and saturation not possible with traditional mediums,” Maier says. “Often, my cars and motorcycles look like they are under glass.” While at Pratt Institute, Maier was chosen to assist “Junk artist” Robert Mallary on his famous sculpture Cliffhangers (1964). This led to meetings with pop artists Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as with John Chamberlain, famous for his sculptures made from crushed car parts.