fresh paint
ABOVE Antony
Williams, Barry,
egg tempera,
46x40cmANTONY WILLIAMS
Working almost exclusively in egg tempera, Antony Williams
captures every hair and wrinkle through a painstakingly
exacting method.
Mixing equal parts egg yolk and pigment with a palette
knife, Antony’s ceramic palette usually contains his core
colours of Ivory Black, Yellow Ochre, Genuine Vermillion,
Terre Verte, Titanium White, and Cadmium Red Deep. For
this portrait, Barry, he added Naples Yellow for the
background and Ultramarine Blue Dark for the jumper and
some aspects of the tones on Barry’s face. Antony works
on gesso panels, which he also prepares himself.
“By applying the paint in almost pointillist touches with
Kolinsky sable brushes, I think what makes my work
distinctive is that the backgrounds get the same approachas a face,” he says. He met his subject 10 years ago and
has been drawing Barry ever since. “He was a very
flamboyant and powerful personality, which I was slightly
hesitant about, in the sense of working on a one-to-one
basis in my studio where I needed to be in control.”
By the end of the process though, Antony felt that he had
gained a much deeper understanding of Barry’s character,
beyond his extrovert personality. “Through long sittings you
can build up a mass of small observations concerning the
light, the mood of the sitter, your own state of mind, and
this all becomes distilled, so to speak, into the final work; it
becomes so much more than just a snapshot of one
moment in time.”
Antony’s solo exhibition will be on display at Messum’s Gallery,
London 27th June to 15 July. http://www.antony-williams.com >Artists & Illustrators 1512 Fresh Paint.indd 15 12/05/2016 09: