Behind the Masque Drawing

Tony is an artist working and living in his home town of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England. All his life he has been involved with visual arts and some time ago became a full-time professional artist, producing paintings and drawings in a veriety of media but mainly in oils. Tony has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and his published artwork has a worldwide distribution. "The original subject / object chosen by me stimulates a 'new' being in its own right; a painting which stands on its own terms and valid in itself. I do not try to emulate photography but allow the process of drawing and painting to probe beyond a material likeness and create its own inner life. I find it of no value to copy nature in a slavish way except that by doing so perhaps we can learn to see and understand the world more clearly than before. I cannot see much use at all in descriptive painting (illustration) when the camera can do it much better. It is my belief that the approach leads to the revelation, as if new, of that which has always been with us, transforming the supposedly trivial into something fresh and indelible. I like to learn something new from each painting I make. If I am not learning, descovering, then I am merely repeating myself and making no advances in the artistic process". Tony Heald.