As a visual artist in the traditional sense, I work primarily with oil on canvas and rely heavily on direct observation. The paintings are built up in layers over time. Densely painted, glazed and scumbled, they leave behind telltale traces or pentimentos of what went before. Sometimes the surface is arbitrarily abraded to reveal a glimpse of what lies beneath.
In the work, I employ visual metaphors and enigmatic narratives to explore my quotidian existence and address potent social issues such as environmental degredation, sexuality and disease. I examine the blurred line between conjecture and assertion. I strive to develope a tension between the real (sometimes in the guise of found objects) and the imagined; between myth and memory. "Richly painted and abundant with metaphoric imagery the works are not only aesthetically pleasing but intellectually complex" wrote Julie Sasse, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Tucson Museum of Art in an essay for the book "Christopher Pelley / Recurrent Themes". Critic Joyce Korotkin has written "[Pelley] forces the past and the present to co-exist on the same plane echoing the manner in which successive civilizations rise and fall on top of one another".

This oeuvre is an ever evolving investigation of my personal identity, my connection to the past and the past to the present. Ultimately the paintings are about my relationship to painting. They refer to the history of painting, they deal with the act of painting and the physical nature of paint itself.