Anthony Daley

ANTHONY DALEY (b. 1960)

Jamaican-born painter Anthony Daley moved to the UK 1970s, and has lived in south London ever since.

Although deeply grounded in abstraction, Daley's works have often begun by painting still life arrangements, which he then "reworks until they lose their form and evoke an emotional response.” He recalls his first memory of wanting to paint: “I was four. I was in the bushes across the river from where I lived. It had rained and I looked up to the sky with the light coming through. It was the start of a love affair. I just wanted to paint it, to draw it. The sheer blueness of that sky – I had to do it justice.” 

The improvisational drips of paint and explosive colour fields that recur across his canvases are indicative of his dedication to the “raw physical act of painting” and demonstrate the central importance Daley has always placed on the process of art making itself, and above all, "searching for new painterly possibilities." 

After graduating from Leeds Arts University in 1979, Wimbledon College of Arts in 1982 and Chelsea College of Arts in 1983, Daley was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Painting Fellowship in 1984. He has exhibited extensively nationally and internationally: his first major showing was in 1983 as the first ever Artist of the Day at Flowers Gallery, London and his work has since been exhibited at The Barbican and The Royal Academy of Art, London, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York City and Pulchri Studio, The Hague. His work is represented in numerous public collections including the Tate Collection, the National Portrait Gallery and Dulwich Picture Gallery. Since the 1990s, he has also been teaching, with Chris Ofili among his former students at Chelsea College of Art. He lives and works in London.