Peter McCormick passed away on July 3, 2025 at the age of 88. Those of you who are loyal readers from long ago will remember Pete from the books we wrote together and the seminars we presented together. The image shared above is a promo shot taken for our first book, CorelDRAW 4 Unleashed in 1993 and Pete is on the left, Carlos Gonzalez in the middle and I’m on the right. I’m going to share a little about Pete’s impact in my life and what he had been doing in the last few years.
I met Pete in 1991 at a CorelDRAW Users Group meeting in Phoenix. Most of the attendees at these meetings were using CorelDRAW for graphic design. Not Pete, he had come to CorelDRAW from painting and wanted to use it to create art. Fonts to him were just a way to put a name on his art. He frequently told the story of not even turning on a computer until he was 54 years old and he had a desire to teach other artists how they could use a computer and CorelDRAW to create artwork.
Not too long after we met, his Venice won a Grand Prize in Corel’s Third Annual World Design Contest. In our CorelDRAW 4 Unleashed book, we printed both the original vector drawing and a bitmap version he had turned into a night scene. You can see both as they appeared in the book below.
Together we wrote six CorelDRAW books, created Unleashed Productions and traveled all over the place putting on more than one hundred CorelDRAW seminars. Pete focused on how to create artwork and I handled more of the technical parts of it. When the demand for seminars waned in the late 90s, he chose to leave Unleashed though we still worked together extensively.
There were a few years where he got away from his art, or he at least spent less time on it. That changed a few years ago. He loved used AI to create fantasy-themed images. Most of the paintings he created, he had given away to friends and family. I was the recipient of a painting of the 15th hole of the Makena Golf Course. To refill the walls of his house, he got into transferring some of his digital artwork onto canvas. You’ll see him working at his computer on artwork in CorelPHOTO-PAINT in the image below.
This also led to painting on canvas again. It was a struggle for him to keep his hand steady, but he figured out a way. Just days before his death, he finished a painting of an angel floating above Monument Valley shown below.
Pete was a good friend and a father figure to me. We shared a lot of laughs, complaints about travel incidents and built a business together. RIP Pete!
I aleays enjoyed talking with Pete at Corel conferences. He was insightful and always friendly.
Pete even agreed to be the judge for a design contest within my local CorelDRAW user group. He even helped molify a disgruntled contestant who collared him at a conference.
I remember Pete well from those excellent seminars in the 90’s. Thanks for sharing his final activities. So sad to learn of his passing.
I just purchased a new copy of CorelDraw after many years, and Peter came to mind, and I just found this news. 😢 I really enjoyed meeting Peter the few times I visited the Corel Users Group meetings. At the time I was working under contract with a design firm called Bold Impressions, then went on to be the staff designer at Turf Paradise horse race track. Every time, he was very kind to me and always greeted me with a big smile, even among the chaos of those meetings, and I also spoke to him a few times over the phone. Every time was a treat. Rest well, Peter.