Peter Barker was born in 1954 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, the son of a well known musical family on both his mother's and father's side. Much of his childhood was spent in the surrounding countryside, where his inherent love of nature was instilled through bird-watching, fishing and breeding butterflies and moths, hobbies which would feed his interest in conservation. It was also apparent in those early years that Peter had an innate ability to draw and paint all he observed. Peter's dormant artistic talent finally blossomed into an inevitable vocation in 1983 when he quit professional golf and embarked on a new career as a full-time artist.