Following an unremarkable secondary education Irvine was lucky enough to be accepted onto a two-year pre-diploma course where he got to spend most of the time drawing which he loved. He went on to Sheffield College of Art to study painting, then to Hornsey School of Art to get his teaching certificate.
Irvine considered art therapy as a career and briefly worked in the Psychiatric Unit of a London Hospital. He taught art for a short time, but became a full time illustrator and artist in 1978 when he started exhibiting with Portal Gallery.
Peacock says of his work, which could broadly be defined as surrealist, that he is fascinated by his own cultural conditioning, the idea that objects, people, everything contains other identities, and that it is possible to decode and strip off a layer of what is real and get a glimpse of something else, often it is a combination of objects that inspires this: ‘ like the chance encounter between an umbrella and a sewing machine’, revealing that the familiar has a function quite different from it’s overt one.
Irvine sites his inspiration as myths, folklore, and T.V. particularly the Lone Ranger. He is interested in the work of the Surrealists, Umberto Eco, Franz Kafka, Fetish Figures and Groucho Marx.
Irvine has had a long career as a successful illustrator.
In 2004, Peacock exhibited with other Portal Painters in Tanglewood, Massachusetts. He had a one man show with Portal the same year.
Irvine exhibits with Portal Painters at The London Art Fair in January, The Affordable Art Fair in Battersea in March and The British Art Fair at the Saatchi Gallery in September.
