Geoff Archer

Geoff Archer was born in Manchester. A Fine Art course at Nottingham School of Art was followed by a postgraduate teaching course which led to a thirty year career teaching art. He also has a Masters Degree in Art History from Manchester University. Since the 1980s he has regularly exhibited his paintings in both group and solo exhibitions and in 2013 he co-founded the Macclesfield Open Art Exhibition with Pat Havis.

His most recent paintings depict vehicles abandoned in the woods of America’s southern states. They present a series of contrasts - of old and new, past and present, growth and decay and the natural and the man-made, while stylistically, the photographic realism which mimics the photo’s instantaneity is in contrast to the reality of paintings which clearly took many hours to produce.

It is important to the artist that his paintings appear to represent an observed reality. If they appear photographic it is not only because he works from photographs but also because photographic realism is a way of saying “this is real’. That said, the paintings are rarely ‘straight copies’. What are considered obtrusive details are removed, other changes are made, and in many cases elements from a number of photos are combined to create the finished image.