Robert Armstrong
Journeying through the last two decades of the artist’s work, the book Robert Armstrong is a dazzling account of his encounters with the landscapes of Ireland and of Asia, with the traditions of his European and Oriental predecessors, and with painting in a shifting contemporary world.
It includes a vivid and incisive overview of Armstrong’s practice by the writer Colm Tóibín and a conversation with art critic Aidan Dunne which delves further into his process of making paintings that reward contemplation in a world saturated with endless digital imagery.
Presented in visually thematic sections, structured as the rooms of a gallery survey rather than as a chronological account, Robert Armstrong takes the reader—or viewer—from an early painting of the Aeolian islands to the recent works in Japanese ink on rice paper, via recurring riffs on Renaissance art. The book is both a documenting of a thoughtful, roguish and untiring engagement with painting and, page by page, an exhilarating and gorgeous experience in its own right.
“One of the hallmarks of Armstrong’s talent is his tact. While his work depends for some of its strength on his reading of the work of painters from the past, and his thinking about the history and process of painting, it also depends on a sort of controlled spontaneity, a sense of free gesture, quick mark, brave addition.”
— Colm Tóibín
Robert Armstrong lives and works in Dublin, and is represented by the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, also in Dublin. He is a Founder Member of Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin and was Head of Painting at the National College of Art & Design (NCAD) from 2002 until his retirement in 2018, having taught at the college since 1991. He has exhibited regularly in Ireland and abroad for more than forty years.
Robert Armstrong is published by Dürer Editions, 2023
Designed by Simon Watson & John Power
Publisher Richard Power
Published by Dürer Editions, 2023
Printed by Artes Gráficas Palermo, Madrid
Hardback, 160 pages, 240mm x 310mm
ISBN: 978-1-8383143-6-1
First Edition - €55
Collectors' Edition - €1,500
A Collector’s Edition of 15 books each in a slipcase, that includes a unique original Japanese ink watercolour on rice paper mounted on 600 g/m Sanders watercolour paper, 220mm x 296mm. Signed, numbered 1-15.
