Seth Armstrong

“When this artwork was originally created in oil, it was interpreted in ways that the artist had never imagined. Most of those interpretations concerned drugs. There was a widespread rumour that it was about getting high off lemon peels. The idea was that you could scrape the fibres from a lemon peel and cook them over a low fire to release hallucinogenic qualities. This, of course, is not true. To find the true meaning of this work, grab yourself a magnifying glass and watch the folks within it.”


– Seth Armstrong 


Seth Armstrong was born in the Silverlake district of Los Angeles in 1983. Armstrong’s folk-infused hyper-realism reflects his interest in the Dutch renaissance and the California plein air movement of the early 20th Century. Depicting vertiginous suburban LA neighbourhoods, Armstrong imbues his pieces with a sensitive vitality, while playing with the affecting emotional quality of warm and cold light alongside sun and shadow.