Pete Duquette

by Lynne Ober

Artist Pete Duquette has found an unusual medium on which to express his art – he creates pastoral scenes on T-Shirts.

Pete can’t remember when he started drawing but remembers sitting in a classroom as a student and drawing in his notebooks. “I probably should have been paying attention in class,” he grins, “but I was always drawing.”

Pete grew up in Litchfield and attended and graduated in 1977 from Alvirne High School. “Alvirne burned down while I was there. We went to Memorial school, but came back to a fresh, new Alvirne,” he recalled.

While in high school, he took art classes and honed his drawing techniques, but it was after he graduated that his art started to take on its own form.

Pete draws what he sees in the communities in southern New Hampshire. He starts by walking around a town, taking photographs. Using the photographs, he begins drawing. “After I get the basic scene done, I take a break,” Pete explained. After the break, he re-examines what he’s drawn with an artist’s eye.

“If I’m satisfied with the first draft, then I start working on it with a Sharpie Marker,” he explained. “I do have to use white out sometimes.”

Once his draft is completed, Pete makes a photocopy of it and goes back to the original place that was his inspiration and walks around. “I look at my drawing and at the town where I started,” he said. “If I’m doing a T-shirt for a Town or place as a fund-raiser, I want to be sure that it’s right. I look at the amount of windows and doors on a building and try to see if my drawing makes the streets look right and those kinds of details,” he clarified.

Over the years Pete has done a number of commemorative T-shirts for a variety of fund-raisers. “I like to do something for the communities around here,” he explained. One of his fundraisers was for the Derry Museum and another was for the Town of Chester.

When he was doing the T-shirt for Chester’s fundraiser, he spent quite a bit of time in Chester. “I look for the odd things that make each design unique. What’s different about this town from the others? For example, in Chester, there’s an old telephone booth that I put into the middle of my design. The first time I was there I didn’t see it, but when I came back I noticed that it was missing from my design,” he explained.

In front of each design is a row of trees. Pete uses the trunks of the trees to spell out the name of the town or place. If you look closely at the tree branches, you will see that the leaves and branches form faces hidden in the trees. “I like to do the unexpected,” he smiled.

At Harvest Fest this year, Pete sold Hudson T-shirts. Behind the trees is a drawing of Hills House and Route 102 passing in front of Alvirne High School. Pete generously donated $5 from each T-shirt sale to the Hills Library building fund.

If you are interested in seeing his T-shirts, Pete can be reached at 594-0159 in the evenings.