Peter Leis was born in Sydney, Australia in 1938. He started his career in 1953 when he began an apprenticeship in signwriting and attended a course at Sydney Technical College where he took a course in screenprinting.

By the late 1950s, he was fully invested in the screenprinting trade, first as a stencil-cutter in a point-of-sale display printing firm, followed by working with a wallpaper-printing company, and after that, he moved on and ventured into pressure-sensitive and decal printing.

As a young person who had been bitten by the screenprinting bug, Peter worked around the industry to gain some experience, printing on plastics, glass, pennants, T-shirts, and halftone posters.

By the late ’60s, Peter had become a teacher of screenprinting. He took over the position of his past teacher, Vince, when he retired. From 1970, he was given the job of putting together a new course for apprentices of screenprinting in the School of Graphic Arts at Sydney Technical College, a course that still exists though updated many times.

Then in 1976, Peter was seconded into teaching printing technology in a design school to visual arts students as part of their degree course. During the following years, he made a number of trips to Europe to attend FESPA and DRUPA, and from these exhibitions, he made a lot of valuable contacts, people whom he got to know, and was to visit on a number of occasions over the following years.

Along with his teaching and traveling, Peter spent six years at part-time classes at art school and four years learning camera operating for graphic arts. Camera operating was a subject that was included in the new screenprinting course after 1970. Although photographic camera work has been eclipsed by digital methods, the underlying knowledge and language remain relevant.

Peter’s mother assisted him in stencil making and printing for a number of years, and when she became confident enough, she set up her own screenprinting business and specialized in doing work for clubs’ printing pennants, decals, and T-shirts. It was a good little business and good a good run for eleven years.

In 1982, Peter established a company for the trade, supplying mesh, frames, and stretching; photo stencils, and digital film services; along with squeegees, inks, and chemicals. It was run by two of Peter’s children, Amon Leis (Director) and Ms. Shivaun Leis (Operations Manager), in Rozelle, NSW, and is now permanently closed.