LAGUNA BEACH, CALIFORNIA.- The Laguna Art Museum presents The Many Faces of Roger Armstrong, through February 27, 2005. Opening November 7, 2004 is The Many Faces of Roger Armstrong, a retrospective of work by this octogenarian artist and teacher from Orange County who, at the age of 86, is still actively painting and instructing others. A highly versatile artist, Armstrong’s work includes paintings in oil, watercolor, and acrylic. Shown in the exhibition will be works from the 1940s to the present. His paintings of the urban landscape of Los Angeles in the 1940s reflect the influence of his mentors at Chouinard Art Institute, California regionalist painters Phil Dike, Dan Lutz, and Rex Brandt. Later, he would focus on the Southern California landscape and seascape, utilizing the medium of watercolor.

Like Phil Dike, Armstrong joined the ranks of Disney artists, developing a career as a cartoonist that would earn him a national reputation. For several decades his drew comic strips for newspapers and comic books, among them Scamp, Napoleon, and Little Lulu. Besides Disney, he also worked for Warner Bros. and Hanna-Barbera. Examples of his cartoon career will be included in the exhibition, some dating as recently as September of this year.

Armstrong began a teaching career in the late 1960s, as a drawing and painting instructor at the Laguna Beach School of Art, today the Art Institute of Southern California. He also taught at several other colleges in Southern California and at painting workshops in the United States and Europe. Today he teaches to small groups of students at his studio. In addition, between 1963 and 1965 he served as director of the Laguna Beach Museum of Art. During his tenure he mounted innovative exhibitions, which introduced contemporary art to the community.

Armstrong participated in group exhibitions for many years, most notably with the National Watercolor Society (serving as president in 1984-85) and Festival of Arts, Laguna Beach. He received many awards for his work and was given the Bicentennial Award for Meritorious Contribution to American Culture from Cypress College in 1976 and the Golden Award from the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists in 1992. The Art Institute of Southern California conferred on him an honorary PhD in 1990. The exhibition is being curated by Laguna Art Museum curator of collections Janet Blake.