About

Arthur Trombetta is a French artist based in Rochester, UK, and a 2018 graduate of Central Saint Martins (MA Contemporary Photography). He works where traditional and digital techniques meet, building large-scale prints from abstract ink and acrylic sketches that he then reworks and enhances digitally.

Shaped by a background in painting and photography, his practice isolates small, intricate details and builds a narrative around each one. By combining the tactile fluidity of ink with digital artefacts, his work sits within contemporary hybrid media and has been exhibited across Italy, France and the UK.

Artist Statement

I fuse traditional and digital techniques, turning abstract ink and acrylic sketches into large-scale prints. I start with the details that catch my eye, shapes and colours that suggest landscapes, planets or ethereal figures, then enhance them digitally, merging the tactile flow of paint with technological distortion.

From those details I build narratives that bring each piece to life, guided by the artwork itself. Like the contemporary artist Walid Raad and his play with fabricated truths, I am drawn to the blurred line between fact and fiction in a digital age.

This grew out of earlier research into how images evolve alongside new technology and realistic simulation, work that had me poring over drone and satellite footage, studying landscapes and cityscapes in fine detail. What truly reshaped my practice, though, was a visit to the Van Gogh Museum, where a magnifier let me study the brushstrokes of a single painting up close.

That moment opened another dimension of the work. It drew my attention to the unseen beauty held in the smallest details, and taught me to read a painting the way a drone reads a landscape: patiently, from above, uncovering the stories hidden in the smallest elements.

I also paint figuratively from time to time, drawing on Basquiat's boldness and Richter's abstraction to make vibrant, personal pieces. Distinct from my narrative prints, they are where I say what paint can express when words fall short.