Artist
Tony Roberts
Painter/printmaker. Oil, watercolours, pastel, collage, etching (drypoint), linocut, woodcut, landscape, still life, portrait
BACKGROUND
Tony studied painting at the Royal Academy Schools from 1959-1962. His art school training focussed on traditional methods and materials, with a strong emphasis on drawing and painting techniques.
Born in London, Tony moved to the Yorkshire Dales in 1963. The painter Norman Adams RA (1927-2005), spoke about Tony's approach to landscape, saying, “He has discovered un-noticed places and also painted famous subjects; painted by Turner. Becks, rivers and waterfalls fascinate him; Tony has made the north his true home. The love of particular places is essential to a landscape painter.”
Tony's treatment of his subjects is personal, interpretive and formalised. Exploration of the drawing process is an integral part of his working methods. Gesture, line, marks and the materiality of his mediums become as much the subject of his work as the observed image. His approach to colour is intuitive and expressive, picking up fragments of observed colour relationships and expanding these emotionally and pictorially.
A strong element in Tony's work has been informed by his studies of Buddhism and his abiding interest in metaphysical themes. He offers personal, Europeanist, interpretations of Buddhist subjects, sites, mandalas and symbolic imagery. He also employs Buddhist and metaphysical approaches to his European painting subjects, disintegrating and re-integrating landscape and still life images to create individual, painterly responses.
Tony Roberts opens his studio to the public (by appointment), where you can see work in progress and browse through a large collection of paintings.