Seth Armstrong

Strikingly cinematic, Armstrong’s works possess a compositional balance, saturated colour palette and a charged narrative that explores the tension between public and private. His folk-infused hyper-realism reflects his interest in the Dutch renaissance and California plein air movement of the early 20th Century, using oil paints to capture the changes in the delicate daylight hours. The artist plays with the affecting emotional quality of warm and cold light, sun and shadow, fascinated by the “way brick and concrete absorb light and heat all day and seem to radiate it back into the night air.” Executed in dreamy washes of ochre, emerald and teal tones that tie into the cyclical patterns of the seasons, Armstrong builds a world that exists outside of time. 

Upon more detailed inspection, Armstrong’s paintings reveal quiet traces of human presence and, as the onlooker becomes an involuntary voyeur, the scenes start to assume a disarmingly intimate element of nostalgia. These cityscapes tap into the innately human urge to peer into the private lives of others and in their delicately intimate quality, Armstrong’s works bridge the personal and the universal in its treatment of memory, time and emotional connections that we forge with people and places.