Anthony Daley
Anthony Daley is a London-based Jamaican British painter whose work reimagines abstract expressionism as a space of reverie, exploration, and wonder. Graduating from Chelsea School of Art in the early 1980s, Daley’s work first came to public prominence after being the subject of the inaugural ‘Artist Of The Day’ exhibition at Angela Flowers Gallery, London; an important spotlight subsequently given to artists including Tracey Emin and Nicola Hicks.
From his earliest childhood experiments with carving birds from wood in Jamaica, Daley has pursued what he calls an obsession with beauty and truth. Influenced as much by science and philosophy as by art history, he is fascinated by figures such as Isaac Newton, John Keats, and Albert Einstein, weaving their ideas into his painterly investigations of perception, reality, and universal consciousness.
Daley’s expansive and painterly canvases combine a profound appreciation of the Old Masters, animated by the energy of contemporary painterly abstraction. For Daley, abstraction is not “a painting of nothing,” but a paradoxical field of “everything and nothing.” He describes his works as invitations - fields of colour and form in which one might “walk into these spaces and explore and go into places of wonder.”
His work has been the subject of multiple exhibitions in the UK, USA, & Europe, including his recent critically acclaimed exhibition, Son of Rubens (2022) at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The recipient of major awards including the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Painting Fellowship, Daley’s work is held in major collections including Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and the NHS Trust.
From his earliest childhood experiments with carving birds from wood in Jamaica, Daley has pursued what he calls an obsession with beauty and truth. Influenced as much by science and philosophy as by art history, he is fascinated by figures such as Isaac Newton, John Keats, and Albert Einstein, weaving their ideas into his painterly investigations of perception, reality, and universal consciousness.
Daley’s expansive and painterly canvases combine a profound appreciation of the Old Masters, animated by the energy of contemporary painterly abstraction. For Daley, abstraction is not “a painting of nothing,” but a paradoxical field of “everything and nothing.” He describes his works as invitations - fields of colour and form in which one might “walk into these spaces and explore and go into places of wonder.”
His work has been the subject of multiple exhibitions in the UK, USA, & Europe, including his recent critically acclaimed exhibition, Son of Rubens (2022) at Dulwich Picture Gallery. The recipient of major awards including the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Painting Fellowship, Daley’s work is held in major collections including Tate, the National Portrait Gallery, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and the NHS Trust.