Stephen Armstrong

I LOVE PAINTING. IT IS MY WAY OF understanding the world around me. Everywhere I look I see a face or a landscape that demands to be caught on canvas.

I do lots of drawings with ink, pencil and charcoal to know a subject, but it is oil paint that really excites me. There is nothing like the smell and feel of oils, they have a tactile, physical quality. Each brushstroke is like trying to catch hold of time, to pin it down before it slips away.

How I compose a picture is very important to me. I swing between a Classical and Romantic sense of pictorial composition. The Classical is all verticals and horizontals,