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Anthony graduated with a First Class Degree in Fine Art Painting in 1984, and has been painting ever since.
Statement:
It took me many years of intense practice before I felt that I had the slightest idea of how to make a painting. Painting has always been for me a very difficult thing. I have to be in an extremity of emotional, mental, physical and spiritual excitement to be able to carry a painting
forward. If I am not in an exalted and ecstatic state, I cannot proceed with the work, because I have no Idea how to. My paintings are made over weeks and months and even years on those tremendous days when I feel like I know what the hell I am doing. My paintings may or may not have psychological and or symbolic content; If that is ever the case, it is merely an accident of my birth, something that I cannot possibly have exerted
conscious or wilful control over; a result of the particular circumstances of my
origin. and development The aspect of my work that really interests me is its rhythm. I feel that the ultimate meaning and value of a painting lies in it's rhythm. A painting is a
composition of line and tone and colour. It has a form. It has a rhythm. It is through the form and through the rhythm, that a painting operates on the deepest level, beyond rational cognition, in the realm of feeling and spirit.
I want my paintings to be beautiful; In order to be so, a painting needs to
possess finality of form. Finality of form is achieved when a work will suffer no addition or subtraction, however small, without the intensity of its effect being diminished or entirely destroyed. It requires a phenomenal subtlety to achieve this end. Subtlety is only possible when one is working freely, fearlessly, spontaneously; and in a state of the greatest possible enjoyment.
i.e.. at those rare and wonderful moments when the conscious life and the
unconscious life become united in an ecstasy of self realisation.
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