In this talk Robert Armstrong will talk about his painting practice – ranging between earlier figurative and expressionist work to more recent pared back paintings. He will explore the thought processes and decision-making involved in his evolving practice. A meditation on classical, mainly European, painting has been central to Robert Armstrong’s painting process, but often in oblique, selective ways. Frequently minor background details of Renaissance paintings are excavated to provide a starting point separated from grand historical, mythological or biblical narratives.
He says that he wants the surface of his paintings to show the history of their making and to contain their own narrative. In his most recent squeegee paintings gesture and image are erased and what is left is a ‘paintscape’ – a glimpse of a world in a state of flux.