My name is Peter Diender and my artist name is Archie. I was born in 1966 in the Netherlands and have been living in the Highlands of Scotland for over 30 years. I'm a self-taught artist and I have been creating art since 2010.
The medium I use is acrylic paint on canvas. My early artworks are colourful contemporary paintings, often in a more graphic style. They stand for a positive approach towards a fair and equal, eco-friendly and peaceful society. To me the many different vibrant colours used in those paintings represent all the different people, cultures and countries on our planet. All working beautifully in harmony, the way it should be. My main artistic influences for these paintings are artist and teacher Sir Michael Craig-Martin and renowned Japanese graphic designer Ikko Tanaka.
At the end of 2021 I decided to take my art into a different direction. The paintings I'm creating at present sees emoji characters placed in cartoon settings. These new paintings are much more influenced by pop art. In these days where we talk more and more in emojis I am taking the emoji characters out of the social media comment boxes and onto the canvas. It's more edgy than my earlier work with often more colourful language added to the still colourful paintings.
