Nick Archer

Nick Archer (born 1963) lives and works in Rye, East Sussex, England. Trained at the Royal Academy Schools in London (1996-1999), he won several awards, including 1st at the ‘Hunting Art Prize’, commendation at the ‘BP Portrait Award’ and the Figure Painting Award at the ‘Discerning Eye’. Having exhibited extensively in the UK and Europe since 1999, including solo exhibitions with Louise Alexander Gallery (Porto Cervo, Italy), Sarah Myerscough Fine Art (London), Long and Ryle (London), Galerie Hug (Paris) and a duo shows at Gowen Contemporary (Geneva) in 2014 and 2017. He has featured in museum exhibitions including the National Portrait Gallery (London), the Wandsworth Museum (London). In 2012, he had a solo exhibition at the Maison de la Culture (Metz, France) and had a solo show at the Hastings Museum (EastSussex). 

In 2017 Nick curated ‘Time, memory and landscape’ a group exhibition at Long and Ryle, highlighting evolution in contemporary landscape painting. In 2019 he had a solo booth presentation of his work at ‘Untitled’ art fair in San Francisco with New York gallery Christine Park gallery. He has also featured at Dallas Art fair 2019 & 2020, Art Tokyo 2019 with Christine Park gallery. Recent group exhibitions include ‘Making the Landscape’ at Gowen contemporary Geneva and ‘Flowers - Flora in contemporary art and Culture at the Saatchi Gallery. Nick will have a solo presentation at ArtParis in the Grand Pallais in Paris with Gowen Contemporary in April 2026. Nick Archer’s work is held in private, corporate, and public collections around the world.

“With their strange layerings of unexpected filmic and art historical references, (dark side of Walt Disney meets northern landscape), Nick Archer’s paintings have always seemed among the more genuinely complex and cultured explorations of the possibilities of landscape painting in a increasingly urbanised and disinherited culture: the more we are removed from it the deeper into our psyche it goes. These powerful new works seem to darken the picture further – David Lynch and ‘Blade Runner’ meet Altdorfer Bosch and Uccello among others, the layering involved in his paint process underlining the veils of estrangement between us and a lost Edenic world. Thus, in his images of children gazing at apparently deserted houses, we sense the loss as a profoundly metaphysical one.”

Nicholas Usherwood 2017

Galleries Magazine – review of ‘The Journey’ exhibition