Val Archer is one of the most perceptive and meticulous of contemporary painters. Her intensity of observation reflects a lifetime looking at the ideas surrounding what painting is, has been and can be.
Her paintings are generously coloured and deeply attentive to form and texture. Flowers, fruit and fabrics are set against complex, resonant surfaces to encapsulate feelings for places and cultures.
Val Archer was born in Northampton, England, and studied at Manchester College of Art and the Royal College of Art.
Her first solo exhibition was at the long-established Kunsthaus Buhler in Stuttgart, Germany, in 1975. She exhibited with Fischer Fine Art, London, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and with Noortman, Maastricht in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since 1998 she has been represented by the Chris Beetles Gallery, London.
Archer’s commissions have included illustrations and paintings for the Sunday Telegraph, BBC Good Food magazine and illustrated books, the most recent being a collaboration with the Italian food writer Anna del Conte. In the early 1980’s she co-created the Tate Gallery’s award-winning exhibition Paint and Painting about the history of art materials and of colour and technique in painting.
Travel has long informed and inspired her work. Latterly this has included Libya, Portugal, The Netherlands, Southern Africa, Myanmar and Iran.
In recent years she has divided her time between her studios in London and Tuscany, Italy, recording everyday natural and man-made objects that appeal to her. For as long as she has been working, Archer has been offering the fruits of her observations: ‘I’ve always loved looking at things…it’s like eating with your eyes.’