Artist Philip Buytendorp eagerly anticipates the ferry ride, mild weather and familiar faces as he opens the latest show at Peninsula Gallery this Friday.

Now living north of Cache Creek, it will mark his return to the Peninsula.

While living on Piers Island, Buytendorp started his professional career in 1997 with the Sidney gallery, but his artistic intent goes back into his childhood.

“My dad’s a professional artist ... I kind of grew up in a family that had a very strong bent in that direction,” he said.

Born in Brandon, Manitoba, Buytendorp went on extended painting trips with his father throughout his boyhood, traveling throughout the prairies and the Canadian Shield.

“I didn’t really take painting too seriously I never thought I’d be an artist, when I was younger,” he admitted.

But with art books and encouraging words from his parents, he studied art at the Brandon Allied Arts Center in 1978 and 1979. From 1981 to 1986, Buytendorp worked in construction in Calgary, spending weekends sketching and painting the landscapes of the Rocky Mountains. In 1986, he moved to the Fraser Valley and started a five-year apprenticeship under his father.

He wound up moving to Piers Island, where his sister needed work on her home, and found a bounty of time.

“I’d been in concrete for a number of years and the hours were pretty crazy,” he said. Married with a couple of small children, his wife was encouraging him to at least approach galleries.

“The Peninsula Gallery was the first gallery we approached,” Buytendorp said. “I used to take my boat from Piers Island to the marina in Sidney ... I would walk up from there to get groceries, we always walked by [Peninsula Gallery] and we liked the work that was in there.”

And though it was a bit intimidating, he was persistent.

“We did have to nag them a couple of times,” he said. “These poor proprietors of galleries, I think they have a lot of people nagging them.”

That persistence, as the old saying promises, paid off.

“Everybody seemed to think they were quite good,” Buytendorp said. “Let the market be your judge. If your mother owns all your paintings, odds are you might not have much future in it.”

Now he’s garnered a following with buyers from across Canada and the US as well as Europe for his Group of Seven flavoured works.

That Group of Seven influence is evident in “the rawness of the colour the intensity of the colour,” he admitted. “There’s an economy of strokes there, they capture a mood or a feeling rather than trying to portray a scene. I think if we get too accurate about things, the art is lost.”

With a love of things fun, expressive and creative, he hopes to put a smile on faces with his works.

The collection opening Friday is simply entitled Philip Buyten