Peter McNiven (born in 1952) gained his Diploma in Art & Design in 1973. He has held one man exhibitions in Scotland, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Kent, Surrey, West Sussex  Hay on Wye and London.

He has exhibited with the Contemporary Portrait Society, The Royal Society of Portrait Painters and more recently, still life and landscapes at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, the New English Art Club and in the Sunday Times Artist in Watercolour competition, the Lynn Painter Stainers competition and the Discerning Eye at the Mall Galleries.

He exhibited in British Drawing at the Hayward Gallery and has been selected for the Portrait Award Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery on five occasions, winning a prize in 1991.

Portraiture continues to be a fascination: in 1985 the Imperial War Museum purchased his six Falkland War Naval Portraits, which led to a further commission to make portrait drawings of Margaret Thatcher and Sir John Nott for their permanent collection.

In 1991 Peter McNiven was invited to produce a drawing of one of the 24 holders of the Order of Merit for Her Majesty’s Collection at Windsor and the drawing was exhibited in the Order of Merit Drawings exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. He continues to undertake private, public and corporate commissions.

In 1986 he was awarded a six-month French Government Scholarship to Paris at the Cité Internationale des Arts, returning in 2003 and 2011.