Piers Wardle

Christopher Piers Arthur Wardle (20 April 1960 – 22 December 2009) was a British artist, musician and art factotum. Born in Beckenham, he lived in Southwark, London, UK and died in Clyst Hydon, Devon, UK.

After Exeter School where he illustrated the school magazine, designed stage sets for productions and painted a mural of a crow (inspired by Ted Hughes) on the sixth form common room wall, and Exeter College of Art and Design (1978–79), he went to Oxford's Ruskin School of Drawing (1979–82), where his friends included the artists William Latham, Adam Lowe, and Helen Elwes. There too he met the poet Stephen Micalef who was at the other Ruskin College. He was member of St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

Wardle was perhaps the first British painter to experiment artistically with the ideas of Benoit Mandelbrot and other 'chaos' mathematicians, exploring in his work how 'the complexity associated with natural and organic forms can be generated, in appearance at least, by simple rules' (from Piers Wardle's catalogue for an exhibition held at the Pomeroy Purdy Gallery in April 1989). An interest in chaos and fractals is present throughout Wardle's work as is a love of found objects especially sweet wrappers, packaging and signage. He would go on to explore the artistic potential of computer-generated chaotic patterns.

He was the great-grandson of the painter Arthur Wardle. He participated in numerous one man shows and group exhibitions of painting and conceptual art. Initially represented by Purdy Hicks, later Wardle moved to Joshua Compston's Factual Nonsense Gallery. Wardle also contributed a print to Compston's limited edition book Other Men's Flowers. He subsequently exhibited at, amongst others, the Decima Gallery and the Courtauld Institute, and for thirty years collaborated with Stephen Micalef, providing piano accompaniment to the latter's poetry. In addition they produced works on paper; Wardle as Micalef's illustrator.

Wardle also worked as a picture editor for the Redstone Diary. Recent more formal activities included 'printing' concrete for Anish Kapoor, fixing a Marc Quinn, analysing Caravaggio's brush work in Rome, and scanning both Tutankhamun's tomb and Paolo Veronese's Marriage at Cana, (all of which arranged by Factum Arte).

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