Arthur Armstrong RHA

Arthur Armstrong, RHA (1924-1996) was a landscape and still life painter. Born on 12th of January 1924 at Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim, Arthur Charlton Armstrong was the son of a housepainter, Charlton Armstrong, and remembered his father painting pictures with paint remnants from various jobs. Arthur attended Strandtown Primary School but devoted a lot of his time to painting pictures.

'I consider myself an abstract painter completely. I probably do represent something, but in a pure abstract way. I have never painted views, gone out to paint Roundstone; I set out with a set of shapes and ideas. I see a landsape as a texture. I see elements of water, rock, and that sort of thing. I see it as a sort of basic landscape before people moved in. You get all sorts of light in the West of Ireland. A very stark light, or a white light that turns everything into silhouette. But light and shade in that sense are not important. I see landscape as a basic thing - the light plays across it.'