Harrison Armstrong (b. 1999, London) graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA in Painting in 2022. Harrison was a recipient of the RSAJohn Kinross Scholarship in 2022, the Aidan Threlfall Award (Goldsmith’s Company) in 2022 and the Ministry of Nomads Residency, London in 2023.
By making drawings, and then oil painting on a large scale, I can articulate an inner adversity that I have been less able to describe in reality. I am realising that my painting is more than a representation of an internal or external world: it grants me authority over a desertion of meaning - a space to feel a sense of control over the indescribable. The work contextually and thematically explores control. Despite a physical authority over the materials, I still feel a tonal uncertainty within my paintings - the motifs, cynicism, and ambiguous visual narratives represent both the desertion of, and attempt to assert, control. By allowing access to my own interiority, my intention is to comfort rather than isolate the viewer. I want my paintings to project a positive acceptance of uncertainty and an awareness of the inevitable intervention of chance.
