In conversation with Anthony Daley

“Van Gogh once said that one day painting would just be about colour, and I love that, and think that’s about freedom. It’s the freedom to explore and go into the unknown, and I like to think my paintings have that sense of play.”

 - Anthony Daley

Anthony Daley. Photo by James Marshall © JMinventive (jminventive.co.uk).

The works of abstract expressionist painter Anthony Daley explore the language of beauty in vibrant and explosive hues of colour punctuated with iridescent flashes of light. His oversize works represent something of a time portal, creating a unique bridge between the Old Masters and the contemporary sphere, drawinginspiration from a diverse array of sources, ranging from classical literature, quantum physics and modern poetry to natural phenomena. He feeds all of these influences into vast canvases that evoke the sublime, where mesmeric explorations in colour transport the viewer to contemplation of the infinite. His upcoming show, presented by Varvara Roza and Blender Gallery, provides something of an epilogue to his previous successful show Son of Rubens at Dulwich Picture Gallery, in which he responded to paintings of the iconic Flemish artist, and its title Irreality refers to the vagaries of reverie and transcendence. Here, the artist talks to FloLondon about communicating with the ghosts of art history, recalls his early childhood in Jamaica, and tells us why all of his paintings contain a kernel of unrequited love.

What, ultimately, do you think is the purpose of art?
The purpose of art? Oh, God. It's a celebration. It's a revelation. It's a joy. It's a muckraking celebration of humanity. It's who we are. It's play, essentially, but play is one of our most amazing tools of invention. I learned that connection between playing and invention quite early on as a four-year-old, and that connection between truth and beauty. Van Gogh once said that one day painting would just be about colour, and I love that, and think that’s about freedom. It’s the freedom to explore and go into the unknown, and I like to think my paintings have that sense of play.

Are there any times when you feel overwhelmed by your painting process – where it takes over, in a sense, rather than you guiding it?
At some stage the painting will start to paint you. It will take over. And that's an incredible moment, when the work starts speaking back. In those moments, I think, who am I speaking to, am I speaking to Rembrandt? Am I speaking to Einstein? Am I speaking to God? At that point, it's not your painting, and you are speaking to the infinite. I sometimes feel a bit angry with myself for not being a theoretical physicist, but that is a different world, and an extraordinary one. Those people are truth-speakers and interpreters of reality, and they interpret it in such an amazing way from nothing, from just a few vibrations. I hope I am not overegging what I do, but I'd like to think there is some connectivity there in my painting, in terms of playing with reality and truth, and, ultimately, beauty. When I'm painting, it's like I am speaking to the God of painting, or some kind of mythical being. It's like there are two of us, and one of us is directing me to get the next colour out.

Are these things tied to a notion of happiness for you? Was art always a form of escape?
Yeah. I mean, I didn't know as a child in Jamaica that you had to have friends. I wasn't interested. I was more interested in reading and learning, and living with the dead men, you know? All of the geniuses. From a very young age, I always 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. My grandmother had stuck ideas in my head about Eton and Oxbridge, so educational attainment was always the drive. I was seven-and-a-half when she died, but my mantra to myself remained ‘what do I think they would do at Eton?’ So, I made sure I learned music; I made sure I learned art; I tried to teach myself Latin. I made sure I learned everything. I tried to do all that kind of stuff just to make sure that I would survive. That's all I was interested in in Jamaica. I just had the will to learn, and I was fascinated with patterns. I used to love all the patterns. I loved the pattern of writing and poetry, and the power of poetry to express massive concepts with minimal use of language. Everyone thought I was a dreamer.

Did some of your escape into solitary creativity come from being left with your grandparents in Jamaica?

Yeah. And some people were cruel to me in Jamaica. My first set of grandparents – my dad's parents, who I lived with till I was seven-and-a-half years old – were ideal beyond the imagination. They were beautiful, intelligent, highly educated, perfect people. When they died, though, I made the trip across Jamaica to my other grandparents, and it was basically like, Welcome To Hell. The abuse and cruelty was beyond. They took all our money, and everything, and they didn't let us go to school. We became domestic slaves, and, at the same time, I was educating them too. I was teaching them to read and write. It was so hard, because literally every day they would make me go and find money for them, and almost every day I would stand outside of school and cry and rattle the railings, and wish I was in there.

Wow. Art was genuinely a portal to a better world I imagine ...
Yeah. And, luckily, our garden was all clay, so I could make clay sculptures. As soon as I was free from whatever they had been putting me through that day, I would make art, or try to learn something. I used to see it as a Cinderella story, because that had been one of my favourite stories as a child in my first family. My dad's parents had been all about storytelling and reading stories to me. And we were all obsessed with singing, and making up songs around Cinderella. And I'd always be dressed like the little prince who marries Cinderella, in my mind. Then, when I crossed the Rubicon to go and live with my other set of grandparents they tried to knock it out of me, and I became Cinderella, the slave. I had to work day night for them. I was the breadwinner at eight years old. And if I didn't bring back the stuff, I was literally beaten black and blue. But then, at one stage, when I was nearly coming over to live in England with my parents, we went to see one of my grandmother’s sisters in Kingston. She looked at me and said, you know, this boy is special and if you don't get him to school, I'm going to call the police on you. My grandparents then sent me to school for the last six months before I came to England, because of the threat of the police. When I came to England, things got a little bit more normal, because I started school properly.

How was that transition for you?
I was quite embarrassed by my obsessions with science and art when I arrived at secondary school in Leeds, so I just slotted into ordinariness as much as I could to get by. I tried to fit in. I learned to play football. The first thing I noticed was the sadness of the boys in my school. It was last year of an old school, which was an all-boys school, at the time, and the year below was mixed. All of these pupils had just all failed their 11+ and I remember thinking, I was glad I didn't have to take it, because all the boys in my year group had a shadow hanging over of them. But I also remember thinking that these people were really amazing. I'm actually deeply embarrassed by my educational attainment, though, because I always really did want to be an Einstein or a Newton. These people were my family in Jamaica, and they always remained my imaginary friends, in a sense.

Was Rubens one of those people you adopted into your imaginary family?
I do remember deciding at one stage as a kid that Rubens would be my father or teacher. Most of the paintings in Irreality are from my show at The Dulwich Picture Gallery, which was based on responding to Rubens, and, for me, it was almost a bit like a school project. It was distracting from my normal body of work, but it was an opportunity to revel, play and to have fun, and connect more closely with Rubens. I used to live quite near the Dulwich Picture Gallery in the early 80s, and I used to go there every couple weeks. I was always drawn to the painting Venus, Mars and Cupid, which has got a naughty edge to it, in lots of ways. I actually wanted to work with it in the 80s, when I had just finished art school. But I didn’t want to work with figurative paintings for a while, so I thought I'd leave it till later in life.

Incredible then that the opportunity came?
Yeah. When the opportunity to came along to work with the Dulwich Picture Gallery, I had an option to work with that painting. So, I kind of made peace with it, and I just thought, I'll have a play with paint and drawing loosely. Anyway, at the end of the day, the work was up on the wall, and then I had to confront it. Then I had to ask myself do I just leave it behind, or do I carry it forward? I'm always about two years behind my painting in terms of what I am going to paint, or what I want to paint. I don't know if the paintings in the Dulwich show were successful paintings. I can't say that. I still haven't got to that stage. But the paintings exist, and it’s now about what people want to get from them. I don't know. I just thought they can enjoy them, or be confronted by them, or, you know, they can have an argument with them.

What's the most profound response you've had to a piece of work?
It is really about if somebody understands the work, because art is a communication tool, isn't it? It's a vehicle or a portal between me and the other person, and I'm always amazed that somebody would even want to look at a painting. Especially a painting I've done. I'm always full of gratitude when I see people looking at the work, and sometimes preparing to buy the work and take it home. I will never really truly understand that, but I'm full of gratitude and love for that person, because they're buying love, you know? My paintings are always somehow about unrequited love and then somebody actually loving them. It's universal love.

‘Irreality’ by Anthony Daley opens at Varvara Roza Galleries (8 Duke Street, St. James’s, London, SW1Y 6BN) from 12 November - 5 December 2024.

Instagram: @anthonydaleyart

Website: tonydaley.co.uk

Interview by John-Paul Pryor