21 april 2026, Wouter van den Eijkel
What is good comes quickly: Alf Peters at KunstRAI
“What is good comes quickly” is a cliché from football, used when a young player makes their debut and then seamlessly plays their way into the first team. For exceptional talents, age is irrelevant; they rise to the surface while their peers are still dealing with growing pains—that’s the idea behind it.
For artists, too, there is no fixed debut age. There is no lower limit, but most debutants have finished secondary school and attended art academy, placing them somewhere in their mid-twenties. A few are self-taught, and an even smaller group are minors.
Alf Peters is still more than six years away from adulthood, yet he has already built a name for himself with line drawings filled with overlapping and interwoven patterns. His work is busy, playful, and strikingly colourful. He has also collaborated with brands such as Moooi, Wieden + Kennedy, Klabu, and De Groene Afslag. Later this month, Alf Bärbel Wit Peters, as he is fully named, will debut his own work at the KunstRAI with SmithDavidson Gallery at the age of eleven. We spoke with him after school and before a football training session.
Alf Peters, Everything, SmithDavidson Gallery
From line to line
Alf started drawing at the age of two and has not stopped since. “I began with simple line drawings, and they’ve just kept getting bigger,” Alf says. “My drawings start small and keep growing. I go from line to line. It’s a chain reaction of colours and lines.” On his exuberant use of colour, Alf adds: “There can never be too much colour in the world.”
“I draw every day, and a large piece takes me about a month. It depends a bit on how fast I am, because I also play the piano and football.” “A bit of boredom is good too,” his father Antoine Peters adds, “but usually Alf ends up drawing anyway.” Peters senior is also an artist and explains that clients initially approached him, assuming he had created the work.
“What’s great is that SmithDavidson has included Alf in their programme and that he’s given as much space as adult artists.” According to David Smith, Alf’s work connects to a long tradition of artists who approach abstraction not as a concept, but as a necessity.
The collaboration with the gallery came about very naturally. The gallery had been following Alf for some time, and when Alf and Smith met, everything fell into place. Alf says, “What I especially liked was how enthusiastically David spoke about the artists in his gallery and the artworks hanging around us.”
Comfortably at home with music on
Alf creates all his works at home, wearing headphones. He prefers listening to The Weeknd and Joost Klein. “I always listen to music while I’m working. The music has a certain connection with the work.” Alf’s pieces can be read as a translation of the feeling a song evokes in him.
Partly for that reason, his works have no top or bottom: “You can hang them however you like and see whatever you want in them.” He often derives the titles of his works from his favourite songs and the music he plays on the piano. At KunstRAI, works on display include Balloon, inspired by the song Luchtballon by Joost Klein, Popcorn by Gershon Kingsley, Memories by Maroon 5, and Jump by BLACKPINK.
As for what the future holds, Alf isn’t sure: “I’m just enjoying drawing and will see what happens,” though he does have a preference for collaborations. “One thing leads to another. Collaborating is the most fun there is.” He is also brimming with ideas for new works. “My dream is to paint a car one day—one that I can then drive.”
Alf Peters, Popcorn, SmithDavidson Gallery
