Zachary Armstrong

Although created for adults, Zachary Armstrong’s work is inspired by the untainted creativity he found during childhood in the Midwest. His father was an art teacher and regularly allowed him and his older brother to experiment with and indulge in a variety of supplies and surfaces. These adolescent scribbles and childhood recollections, as well as those of his son, appear in paintings, drawings, and objects. His style is amorphous, allowing the freedom of a child’s whimsy and the quality control he exercises as an artist to run parallel to one another. Subtle mutations emerge from Armstrong’s ritual and repetition, particularly in his crude portraits that summon Jean Debuffet’s Automatic portraits from the 1940s. He also explores more meticulous line, proving a unicorn or dinosaur can, in fact, transform into an all-over work that resembles a mature pattern or textile.