Tony Palmer Art

I’m a figurative artist, producing detailed paintings and illustrations that are sometimes surrealist or fantasy art, often mysterious; as well as more traditional local landscapes and commissioned portraits of people or their pets. I use either acrylic paint or oil paint, draw in both pen and ink and pencil. I consider all sorts of commissions, for Illustration or fine art; portraiture of people or animals, people’s homes, or their dreams or fantasies described to me.

Click below to view galleries of my work.

In the past I often had a clear image or vision in my head that would be the theme for a painting and this vision would develop and change during the process of painting. In recent years I have found a way to allow chance and the psychology of perception to dictate the theme of the work.

Artists usually start to paint on a pristine white canvas that is pure and perfect as it is. At this stage, the canvas has unlimited potential, it could become anything from a masterpiece, to the soiling of the white perfection. I have recently started to destroy that purity with random abstractions, diluting paint, pushing two canvasses together, putting a wet acrylic painting out in the rain, daubing and splodging paint with no idea or vision of what I’m going to paint. As I stand back I start to see in the splodges and blots a potential face, or trees or animals or whatever, which I then develop with painting.

This is an exciting method for me, as I can start a work with no ideas and be surprised at the images that appear on the canvas. So far the result has always been figurative, often of a ‘Fantasy’ or ‘Surrealist’ nature. Once the theme establishes its self I work on with conscious ideas that stem from this random beginning.

My Illustration usually has a less random start, as a publisher or writer has given me a commission to illustrate a text, which as I read provokes images in my mind. These images are modified and developed during the process of drawing and painting.

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