Armstrong Art
Where experience and reality coalesce
Mike has developed distinct themes and a unique style for creating art from life. Best known for his nude portraits from life in oils or graphite, Mike's practice has extended to figurative sculpture in bronze and resin, capturing forms in 3D.
" I feel enormously privileged to engage in conversations, to hear about interests, share ideas, aspirations, and fears. To be entrusted with a story and to witness vulnerability.
The Military
"My 23 years of military service shaped me as an artist and as a human being, but it's not everything that I am"
The impact that our lives have on us is that our experiences change the way we perceive. It adjusts the lens, for better or for worse. And so here I am with this relationship with the nude body, which I love, that for 15 years, my focus was on how to destroy it. Literally, I was trained to know how to efficiently and effectively end a life. When I returned from Afghanistan and Iraq, I looked at these forms and thought, how can I have them just be the aesthetic things they were before? That was the challenge, back then. I wrestled with the notion of how I could get back to just them being beautiful things on a wall.
"I'm an artist who has obherent knowledge of how to kill"
"The knowledge of how to kill another human being is not knowledge that is easy to live with. There's a tension that occurs"
DRAWING and PAINTING
Expectation (2019)
By Michael Armstrong
Graphite on Paper
Watercolour
Premium Hand-Finished Tasmanian Blackwood Frame
Art Glass (AR70)
Suspended Promise (2018)
By Michael Armstrong
Museum-Grade Giclée Print
Unframed
Or
Premium Hand-Finished Tasmanian Blackwood Frame in Art Glass (AR70)
Edge of Uncertainty (2018)
By Michael Armstrong
Museum-Grade Giclée Print
Unframed
Or
Premium Hand-Finished Tasmanian Blackwood Frame in Art Glass (AR70)
Supplicant (2016)
By Michael Armstrong
Graphite on Paper
Premium Hand-Finished Tasmanian Blackwood Frame
Art Glass (AR70)
Shadows of Yearning (2019)
By Michael Armstrong
Museum-Grade Giclée Print
Unframed
Or
Premium Hand-Finished Tasmanian Blackwood Frame in Art Glass (AR70)
Tensions Breath (2020)
By Michael Armstrong
Graphite on Paper
Watercolour
Premium Hand-Finished Tasmanian Blackwood Frame
Art Glass (AR70)
Sway (2018)
By Michael Armstrong
Museum-Grade Giclée Print
Unframed
Or
Premium Hand-Finished Tasmanian Blackwood Frame in Art Glass (AR70)
Observers of Being (2020)
Oil on Linen
900x1200
Finalist, Napier Waller Art Prize 2020
Balanced (2025)
Oil on Board
1200x1400
SOLD
Sculpture
Tara (2025)
by Michael Armstrong
Bronze with hand-painted patina
Hand-finished Victorian Ash Plinth
Rosie (2025)
by Michael Armstrong
Bronze with hand-painted patina
Hand-finished Victorian Ash Plinth
Bene (2025)
by Michael Armstrong
Bronze with hand-painted patina
Hand-finished Victorian Ash Plinth
Natal (2016)
Contemplation (2016)
by Michael Armstrong
Bronze
Hand-finished Victorian Ash
An exploration of lyrical form and an intentional pause. Cast in a single bronze, this one-of-a-kind piece sets a tone of rigidity and deep inner thought as hard and soft textures meet.
The Toll (2016) by Michael Armstrong
Resin, Patina
Hand-finished Red Gum
Defined by expressive gestures, The Toll represents authentic emotion. The suggestion of staining reflects the impact of the external world and the struggle for individual expression. Detailed brushwork aligns with experience, materiality of paint equates to stagnation, inertia and destruction.