Anthony Scullion RGI

A Scottish painter whose work focuses primarily with the figure, Anthony’s art focuses on the flesh and soul of the human body. Expressing, through the figure, the depths of the psyche, as well as the beauty of the flesh.

The work mirrors a world that finds humanity searching for meaning in the face of crisis. Identity and place and a search for belonging thread through his work, where we find the subjects of his paintings enmeshed in the expression of their human condition.

Drawing on the tradition of the chiaroscuro of Rembrandt, the spirituality of Giacometti, and the distortion of Bacon these painters are a springboard into a new dynamic within Anthony’s paintings. Paint merges with the body, the spaces in between infused with a weight that often becomes as important as the subjects themselves, in what could be described as a ‘soulscape.’

Whilst portraiture is often his classical mode of expression, the single figure is sometimes accompanied by another or is within a group. The dynamic between the figures conveys a feeling that shares a connectivity with the viewer that invites an often emotional, sometimes visceral response and it is this ability for the viewer to create their own meaning in the work that gives it a timeless quality.

Often working on themes and in series, the artist will pursue this quality in his work. Layering the paint and scraping it back, revisiting it and sometimes leaving areas of raw canvas and there is a blurring of the boundaries of what might be considered finished and what might capture the gestural marks of the painting in a process of creation. This effectively gives the work a feeling of shift and change, again, inviting the viewer in to get lost in their own creative imaginings. ‘What remains in the end is the fundamental essence of existence itself, and this ‘stuff’ - placed before us - is inescapably, a portrait of us all.’

(with thanks to Megakles Rogakos, Historian and Critic of Art )