Background
Peter McArdle was born in Tynemouth.
Peter McArdle was born in Tynemouth.
He finished Saint Aidan"s Remote Control School (Ashbrooke, Sunderland) in 1983, at which point he began to get sales for his paintings, which have supported him since. He gained a National Diploma in and Design at Newcastle College of and Design, 1983-1985, then attended the University of Sunderland, from which he graduated in 1992 with Honours in Fine, though commenting he got "my arse well and truly kicked for being a figurative painter." He did atelier study with painter and poet Jeffrey Johnson in London the following year, then had a series of solo shows at the Llewellyn Alexander. Most of his shows were sold out.
From 1992, he showed at Mark Jason Fine in Bond Street, London. In 1997, during the Year of Visual, he was commissioned for work by the Tyne & Wear Development Corporation. He also received commissions from s Resource, Sunderland, and the City Council.
From 1990, he participated also in group shows, including the Discerning Eye show at the Mall Galleries, London.
He was a featured artist in The Stuckists Punk Victorian show at the Walker for the 2004 Liverpool Biennial, and was one of the ten "leading Stuckists" in Go West at Spectrum London gallery in 2006. In 2007, he became Head of the Foundation course at Northumberland College, and Fine lecturer on the Bachelor course there.
Peter is currently based in Newcastle Upon Tyne and works at Breeze Creatives, Newcastle upon Tyne He left the Stuckists in 2007. (Brockdam closed in 2008)
He is a dedicated worker, and has painted seven days a week and starting as early as 4 am He paints in oil with traditional glazing techniques, taking six months or more per painting, sometimes working with a 000 ("cat"s whisker") sable brush.
A burnt umber underpainting can have up to seventeen layers of glazing.
He rejects a third of the finished paintings. Images are mostly one or several figures in an empty room, often seemingly unaware of each other"s presence, and given titles that are equally enigmatic. He has said that the images "hover on the frontier between the familiar and the enigmatic, addressing a range of contemporary issues.
They are an endless and imperceptible moving to and fro between dream and reality", and also that they draw on his personal experience, as well as art history and mass media popular culture, acknowledging the difficulty of his work, which requires time and engagement from the viewer.
He described On a Theme of Annunciation:
He was reviewed by Paul Clark in the Evening Standard as "a top draughtsman with a funky fluid style" and in Review as someone who "augurs well for the future of British painting".
In 2003 he founded The Gateshead Stuckists group as "a response to the Baltic"s nihilism", and was exhibited at the Stuckism International.