His work reflects this innocence: multi-panel portraits of his mother, treatments of toy army men. Or does it? Peer in his fridge and you'll find an endless supply of Coca-Cola. Eight a day to stave off the headaches. Now consider his last two shows, themed "Plague" and "War." Isn't that a painting of larvae crawling beneath the skin? And those are rats, aren't they, head lice, the body hairs of a fly — all painted with a playful, childlike stroke.

Step back from another abstract piece and Hitler's profile emerges. It's another of Pete's favorite tricks, experimenting with the plasticity of vision, ultra-pixelating an image till you'd swear it's a bunch of colored squares you're looking at.

Pete holds a BFA from Providence College and feels most influenced by the multiple-vantage point techniques of Jasper Johns though his thickly painted canvases hearken back to Van Gogh.