about
Anthony Butterworth was born on 19th August 1976 in Eye, Suffolk. Anthony’s early years and schooling were shaped largely by his struggles with dyslexia. His creative instincts were nevertheless applied and always attuned to the academic demands of his day but the belief and confidence he craved remained elusive until he discovered the one subject which truly encouraged him to discover himself. Art.
Early promise harnessed and harvested, Anthony’s increasingly assured creative touch yielded successive enrolments at Middlesex University 1996-1999 and then Camberwell School of Art and Design 1999-2000. Anthony’s accomplishments were acknowledged with a BA Honours degree in Fine Art, and, latterly, a Masters degree in Printmaking.
Since leaving full-time education Anthony has continued to develop and expand both the outlook and vocabulary of his artistic endeavours. He has drawn on the early abstract inspirations of modern minimalist masters Ellsworth Kelly and Mark Rothko as well as British contemporary artists Callum Innes and Ian Davenport. Anthony aligns himself with that evolving generation of British contemporaries who continue to explore the possibilities of painting on canvas. Much like Innes in particular, Anthony’s latest works hone their visual fluency and arrive at their aesthetic, textural poignancy via processes of addition and subtraction.
Anthony’s paintings are works which, necessarily for him, evolve over time. He states that a work’s genesis, the very idea from which a painting is born, must change as each new layer is added to it over time.
back moreAnthony’s work has been inspired by the techniques and styles deployed by principal influences, Kelly and Rothko. Kelly was well known for using bright colours to enhance his works while Rothko developed a painting style sympathetic to abstraction, incorporating simple flat shapes and vivid colours to convey a range of emotions. Anthony’s approach is similar in mission and commitment but with particular attention paid to a contrasting of the elements offered up in his works: complementary and contrasting colours as well as lighter and darker areas of the canvas.
Anthony will often work on several paintings at a time. He regularly updates ‘failed’ pieces, bringing them to rebirth with different techniques and textures. Oils are the prime paint source but these are variously enhanced and layered with gels and/or synthetic resins to accelerate drying times and thus engineer a different evolution for any given work. Conventional brush strokes can be used in conjunction with or indeed contrast to the palate knife, rollers or even hands.
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