Philip Archer OBE: Shadows and Reflections
'Tenebrae in the western Christian tradition is a candlelit liturgy. Its name suggests darkness, but its mystery and beauty comes from shadows. It’s no wonder the old word for a ghost was a shade, from the same root word. At Tenebrae, as the candles are put out one by one, the shadows shift perspective and shimmer, and the room seems to come alive. Tenebrae is nothing if not a drama conducted by shadows.
Philip Archer’s new work is a drama of shadows and feints, reflections and glimpses - in oil paintings inspired by marketplaces and oil pastels rooted in the landscapes of Le Langhe, Piedmont. Both the paintings and the pastel works arise from the artist’s characteristic practice of what Simone Weil called ‘attention’, to people and to places, to shifting patterns of light and shade. His methods are attentive too. The oil paintings emerge from a long, patient process, adding thin layers of paint repeatedly to achieve a fine balance of colour and form. He is a master of oil pastels, a medium invented for Picasso by his art materials supplier in Paris, Sennellier. The pastels distil his subjects into tight, intense forms, often framing the landscapes of Le Langhe with the geometry of a loggia on the borders of inside and outside worlds. In the paintings and the oil pastels, Archer’s dramas of figures and shadows, of people at work or in contemplation, explore the borders of the material and the transcendent.
Much of this exhibition evokes places and events linked with Helen, the artist’s late wife. The artist’s own contemplation of this world and his faith in the reality of the next world are what lights up his work. Whatever the drama of his market scenes and shadow plays, the heart of them all is mystery and beauty. To borrow a line attributed to the American architect Louis Kahn: ‘The sun never knew how wonderful it was until it fell on the wall of a building’
Michael Symmons Roberts, poet
Philip Archer OBE
Born, Cardiff
Education
1972 -3 Foundation Course, Cardiff College of Art
1973 -6 BA Hons Fine Art, Sheffield College of Art
1977-80 MA (RCA), Royal College of Art
Professional Employment and Interests
1991 – 2019 Principal, Leith School of Art
2007 – 10 President, Visual Arts Scotland
2006 -12 Judge for the Salvesen Travel Scholarship
2015 Contributor to Drawing and Painting: Materials and Techniques for Contemporary
Artists, Thames and Hudson
2021 Awarded an OBE for Services to the Arts and Education
Lectures, seminars and talks to art societies, professional bodies, schools, colleges, universities, radio and TV throughout career.
Exhibitions
1989 – 93 The Thackeray Gallery, London
The Boundary Gallery, London
The Bohun Gallery, Henley
The Muni Gallery, Pontypridd
1994 The Open Eye Gallery
1995 Voyages, Leith School of Art
The Martin Tinney Gallery, Cardiff
1998 The Open Eye Gallery
2000 Towards Byzantium, Leith School of Art
2002 The Gold Gallery, Edinburgh
2003 Bourne Fine Art, Edinburgh
The Richmond Hill Gallery, London
Presence, St Paul’s Cathedral, London
2004 -5 Transformations , Leith School of Art
Visual Arts Scotland, RSA
Martin Tinney Gallery, Cardiff
Welsh Artist of the Year Exhibition, Cardiff
2006 Visual Arts Scotland, RSA
2007 The Flying Colours Gallery, London
2008 Visual Arts Scotland, RSA
2009 Visual Arts Scotland, Gracefield Arts Centre, Dumfries
2010 November Collection, Edinburgh
2012 Leith School of Art Exhibition
2016 Persevere, Oseana, Arts Centre, Bergen, Norway
2019 Remnant, Gordon College, Mass., USA
2019 Departing, Leith School of Art