A noted landscape artist and still-life painter, the Irish artist Arthur Armstrong was born in County Antrim, and studied political science at Belfast University before switching to architecture. Afterwards he attended night classes at Belfast College of Art, meeting contemporaries such as Gerard Dillon, Daniel O'Neill and George Campbell.

When he took up painting seriously he focused on portraits and city scenes, followed by a period he described as "almost action-painting". Surviving in a succession of clerical jobs, combined with commercial design art, Armstrong exhibited several paintings in Belfast (1951), Dublin (1955-7), Belfast (1957). Returning to Dublin in 1962, he began showing at the Royal Hibernian Association. He exhibited thirty five oil paintings at the Ritchie Hendriks Gallery in 1964. He won the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal at the Oireachtas Exhibition in 1968. He became an Royal Hibernian Academician in 1972 and later a member of Aosdana.

Arthur Armstrong's artworks have been exhibited widely in Europe and America, and reside in private and public collections across the world. Solo exhibitions have been staged in Gibraltar (1968); Madrid's Galerie Avignon (1974); David Hendriks Gallery in Dublin; the Tom Caldwell Gallery in Belfast; Gallery 22; Arts Council of Northern Ireland: Retrospective 1950-80 (1981), and Kenny's Gallery in Galway. His paintings have appeared in group exhibitions at Madrid's Kreisler Gallery, Leicester Gallery in London, and the Watergate Gallery in Washington (1972). In 1957 and 1968, he received the Arts Council/an Chomhairle Ealaíon Travelling Scholarship, and in 1973 the Arts Council of Northern Ireland Art in Context prize in 1973.

A prolific painter, completing up to 300 paintings a year, in oils, watercolour and mixed media, he regarded himself first and foremost as an abstract artist.

Source:
Online Encyclopedia of Irish and World Art

Arthur Armstrong was a landscape and still life painter born in Co Antrim. He was educated at Strandtown Primary School and focused all of his free time on painting pictures. He then went to study Political Science at Queen’s University, which was not his first choice.

He managed to change to Architecture and then moved to the Belfast College of Art. At this time, it was not enough to be an artist, and so Armstrong also worked in the Belfast Gas Office in order to make a living.

He then went on to first exhibit his work at the Grafton Gallery in Dublin. In 1957, Armstrong moved to London where he worked in a Labour Exchange and then he won a travel scholarship and visited Spain.

Having held an exhibition at the CEMA Gallery, the Belfast News – Letter commented, ‘a development towards a type of abstraction which is more concerned with a play of textures and an interlocking of quantites and areas of colour.’
Armstrong in 1962, first exhibited his work at the Royal Hibernian Academy. He contributed a total of 74 pieces of art up until 1995.
In his words, ‘I keep painting all the time, I paint about three hundred pictures a year – it’s probably prolific in the generation I belong to…I like working very large. The way I’m working at the moment, I’m using plaster and there’s a strict time limit.’ Arthur died in hospital in Dublin. A tribute was organized at the Academy exhibition and then sale of his works began in 1988.