artists
every piece has a story, and every story begins with an artist
PORT CHALMERS, DUNEDIN · CONTEMPORARY PAINTER
Timothy Peter Armstrong
Timothy Peter Armstrong is a contemporary painter whose work dismantles and reconstructs significant images from the canon of art history. Working primarily in acrylic on wood panel, he isolates figures, gestures and fragments of composition, transforming familiar histories into new and unexpected visual relationships.
about
For Armstrong, art history is not something fixed or untouchable. It is source material—something that can be taken apart, examined and rebuilt.
Timothy begins with significant historical paintings, breaking them down into their component parts. Figures are separated from their original settings, gestures are isolated and spatial structures are disrupted before being reassembled through abstraction.
Through this process, recognisable histories become unstable and open-ended. The original image remains present, but its meaning shifts as new connections and tensions emerge.
Working primarily in acrylic on wood panel, Timothy builds his paintings through layered, gestural brushwork. Traces of both the source image and its reconstruction remain visible, bringing attention to movement, weight, rhythm, surface and the physical act of painting.
His work sits between figuration and abstraction—using the past not as something to reproduce, but as material to be dismantled, reimagined and made contemporary.
Born in Christchurch, Timothy completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Sculpture, at Massey University in Wellington in 2004. Although his current practice centres on painting, his sculptural training remains evident in the way he approaches structure, space, balance and the physical relationships between forms.
Timothy lives and works in Port Chalmers, Dunedin. Alongside his studio practice, he is Head of Technology at St Hilda’s Collegiate School, where he teaches Spatial and Product Design. Across 15 years of teaching, he has also taught Painting, Photography and Art History.
His selected exhibitions include solo shows at Enjoy Public Art Gallery and BATS Theatre in Wellington, as well as group exhibitions at Michael Hirschfeld Gallery and Pea Sea Art in Port Chalmers. His work is held in private collections throughout New Zealand.
After placing renewed focus on his own practice in recent years, Timothy continues to develop a visual language that pulls apart the familiar to uncover something beneath it—new structures, altered histories and possibilities that were present all along.
And when the original image begins to fracture, another way of seeing is revealed.
Timothy Peter Armstrong
Interlocking ribbons of pink, turquoise and ochre create a lively composition of shifting forms.
In Fall of the Giants, Timothy Peter Armstrong brings sweeping curves and fragmented shapes together against a deep blue and charcoal background. Passages of cream, soft green and golden yellow weave through the painting, while visible brushwork gives its twisting forms texture and momentum.
Timothy’s practice draws on historical paintings, dismantling figures, gestures and compositions before reimagining them through abstraction. Here, overlapping forms create a sense of compression and release, inviting the eye to follow their movement and discover new relationships.
Presented in a wooden float frame without glass, this expressive painting would bring colour and energy to a living room, study or space above a sideboard, complementing natural timber and understated furnishings.
Energetic · Layered · Expressive
Acrylic on wood panel · Panel dimensions: 50.8 cm wide × 40.6 cm high × 2 cm deep Wooden float frame, pictured with Miracle of the slave Sold individually
FRAMED