Anthony Daley on the language of beauty and art as a portal to the infinite
The abstract-expressionist painter Anthony Daley produces transcendent works that tip a nod to the genius of the Old Masters while, simultaneously, communicating something vital and contemporary. Since his graduation from the Chelsea College of Arts in the early 80s, he has been increasingly celebrated for his ability to create overwhelming canvases that engage the viewer in a compelling dialogue between the self and the infinite, straddling traditional painting and the dynamic language of modern art in the process.
His upcoming solo show Irreality with Varvara Roza Galleries is no exception, inviting the viewer on a deep dive into reflection upon the inner landscape of being via a wildly explosive colour palette. In this exclusive interview with PORT, the Jamaican-born artist reveals his youthful fascination with mathematics and cosmology, finding wonder in everything from a Newtonian equation to a falling leaf, and tells us why play is the ultimate expression of individual freedom.
Where did the desire to create art initially stem from?
That a very big question with a lifetime of answers, isn’t it? I mean, I’ve made art of some kind from as early as I can remember. One of my earliest memories is one of my relatives coming to show my grandmother a carving of a bird they were very proud of. I thought it didn’t look anything like any of the birds I had ever seen, and I immediately ran off into the woods to go and find some wood to carve a better bird. As a kid in Jamaica, I was always battling with all the artists in the community, as well as all the artists and thinkers in the books at my grandparents’ house, and trying to be better, or as good, as them. From a very young age, I had a fascination with all the geniuses in the world – not just painters, but philosophers and scientists – and the one that fascinated me more than anybody else was Isaac Newton. As a child, I was like a little Newton in my mind, and I was constantly making little experiments.
It’s so interesting that you were initially drawn to science…
I was also always really interested in The Book of Genesis. I remember being in church one day, and the preacher talking about God and the origin of the galaxy, and trying to twist astronomy into religion. He was showing us a picture of a spiral galaxy, and trying to tell us that somehow God made it, and I just remember thinking, there’s a triangulation of thought here, and no real truth to what he is saying. I remember going to sleep that night and just thinking that it was nonsense, and that I didn’t want to believe in God any more. In the morning, I woke up and ran down to look at the spiral in our little river in the garden, and I was really interested in the connection between the two of them – the spiral galaxy and this little whirlpool.
It sounds like you were aware of a deeper reality at a very young age, or a sense of wonder.
I became obsessed with the origin of beauty very early on, and quite obsessed with the meaning of beauty. As a child, I used to go into the bushes and look up through the leaves at the gaps in in the canopy, and the water falling through when it rained, and the little bowls of water, and tiny rainbows, and stuff like that. I used to go off by myself a lot, and I used to enjoy that. Where we lived in Jamaica until I was seven-and-a-half years old, we had a river in the back garden with great big boulders, so I used to go and sit on them and just imagine all sorts of things. It was a kind of reverie really, and I suppose what still plays out in all my work is a kind of reverie and reverence of beauty. It’s all basically to do with the origins of life.
Are you drawn to that notion ‘truth is beauty, beauty is truth’ as espoused by John Keats?
I suppose I’m trying to understand truth. I knew there was no absolute truth early on, but I loved the idea of inventing truth, inventing reality – doing experiments and getting things right. In my painting, I think that’s always been the drive. By the time I was nine years old, I was obsessed with the idea of universal beauty, and I just wanted to try to pursue it – beauty and truth, but also the scientific truth of beauty, wherever, and whatever that was. By the time I started school in Jamaica, I was already too bright for school, quite frankly, because I had educated myself. I had also decided for some reason that
I wasn’t going to get a Jamaican accent, and all those kinds of things. I don’t know how it happened, but I did make these decisions as a kid, and I just painted and read books all the time. I felt I had just found the truth in drawing.
How would you define beauty?
Well, for me, it’s about the beautiful minds of certain people – every so often individuals are born, and they just seem to have these great minds. And that is true across the board. Creativity has nothing to do with art, and it’s not just contained in art – it’s also about maths, physics, geometry, music. I love the beauty of Einstein’s equations, for example, and the way they’re connected with art. There’s always a time when there seems to almost be a surge of thinking across disciplines, and they seem to connect a collective consciousness and push things forward. I really love that. And I love the way a painting you are making has its origins from nowhere, then, as it evolves, it becomes like a collective of consciousness – it’s extraordinary, like magic.
How would you describe the relationship between an abstract artwork and the viewer?
I think it’s to do with acceptance, or maybe a sense of joining forces and becoming one. Painting does a lot of that stuff. The world can sometimes feel very closed out, on one level, for me. But, at the same time, your mind is always connected with everything you have ever read or seen or learned, so there’s a battle for supremacy of ideas going on upon the canvas. When I was younger, it was all about trying to identify beauty in all things, and then that coming through to the painting. But, at some stage in my 30s, I realised that the idea of universal beauty is a bit of a myth, and that it’s all about the individual, and about seeing the universal through the individual, and also seeing all things through one painting. That’s how I see it. When someone looks at the work, and a connection is made, it’s really quite magical. By definition, you’re making a painting that is of nothing, particularly, because it’s an abstract painting that has a kind of personal language, and a connection with the history of painting. Then, when you stick it on the wall, and somebody comes along and understands it, or creates an understanding of it, it has become kind of a portal. I love that connection with the viewer trying to define and play with reality, because there is a reality to a painting and, for me, it is the same reality that you get from looking into infinite space, or trying to explain the origins of galaxies. An abstraction is not a painting of nothing. It’s everything and nothing, and I love that paradox and contradiction. I like to think my paintings have that sense that you can venture into them – you can walk into these spaces and explore, and go into places of wonder.
Irreality is on view at Varvara Roza Galleries 12 November – 5 December, 2024
