About Peter McArdle
Biography
[McArdle’s] works are an endless and imperceptible moving to and fro between dream and reality and any written description of their content would be misleading because it cannot tell about McArdle’s sense of how little is enough – like an actor’s sense of timing or the Japanese sensitivity to the value of emptiness and the isolated figure/object. As composer he is director and stage manager both, with the director feeling for the emotional value of each actor’s part and the most efficient use of space allocated to him or her.
Any artist, and in McArdle’s case the parallel is closest to a poet, has a style which determines and is the particularity of his communication; he could say with Nerval – “I have carried my love like off into solitude”. Feeling the intense privacy, subdued yearning and strangeness of these images for myself as spectator, I am reminded of Fernando Perssoa’s observation.
“ All
The world is a great open book
That smiles at me in an unknown tongue”. (Jeffrey Johnson. Artist & Poet).
In this latest body of work He draws images from the modern world around him and reimagines them, transforming his intuitions and perceptions into paintings of haunting beauty. His skill at balancing color, his meticulous approach, his ability to represent the contemporary whilst also drawing on the knowledge and skill he has acquired via his fascination with the history of painting; results in the poetic, restrained sensibility that is central to McArdle’s sincere and passionate vision.
Born in Tynemouth, UK in 1965, McArdle has been painting since he was a child. His father, a painter (who studied under the pop artist Richard Hamilton) often took Peter along to his studio, setting him composition exercises and teaching how to paint. Whilst completing his studies in Fine Art, another mentor, the miniaturist painter and poet Jeffrey Johnson would come into his life, teaching in an atelier style the drawing skills and traditional techniques of painting that would become the backbone of his practice. He also introduced him to a world of poetry, literature and music that would become a central force in McArdle’s imaginative world. This marriage then, of the art of the Pop era (introduced to him by his father and the work of Richard Hamilton) with the traditional value of painting is a central motif of McArdle’s work.
By the time he had completed his studies McArdle had been shortlisted for the Windsor and Newton Award, selected for a Discerning Eye exhibition and gained gallery representation. He went on to make and exhibit paintings for over 20 years, becoming recognized as a key figure of the Stuckist movement. He has exhibited in a variety of galleries and museums and his work is held in a number of private collections. He then took a sabbatical from exhibiting in order to dedicate his time to teaching, passing his considerable knowledge and experience on to the next generation. He returned to exhibiting in 2018, the latest chapter in a life that has been dedicated to his passion for painting and to art itself.
