Today I am really honored to present my interview and conversation with artist Anthony White. We discuss and share inspirations, creative process, and talk about my favorite subject, the arts. Enjoy and pls don’t forget to subscribe and like our new youtube channel.

Anthony thank you so much for joining me today. Please tell us about yourself.

I’m an Australian-born artist, living just outside Paris. My work, which is abstract-based, is influenced by the histories of colonialism and High Modernism as well as socio-political concerns, particularly government policy, the notion of sovereign power, social justice movements such as the Gilets Jaunes and the growth of global fascism. The 2015 Paris terrorist attacks were a great personal, artistic and intellectual catalyst which forced me to question my pursuit of abstraction and the validity of non-objective painting. 

My subsequent work has focused on social values and the role of culture in civilisation with a particular interest in reclaiming the gestural mark as a signifier of dissent. My work encourages collective curiosity and questions systems of power. I believe it is vital to use my work to raise awareness of state/corporate surveillance, detainment and injustices. I would like to invite the viewer to think about different states of being and to use my practice as a vehicle for philosophy and ultimately emancipation. I have exhibited in galleries in France, the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Latvia and Australia. My work has been included in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Australia and internationally

My favorite question, your greatest inspirations or influences? 

I draw influences from artists such as Corot, Soutine and De Kooning to Anselm Kieffer, George Braque and Sidney Nolan as well as writers diverse as Mikhail Bulgakov, Franz Kafka, Michel Foucault, Edward Said and contemporary events in newspapers and journals

Tell us a bit about your creative process?

It’s a funny process really.I feel like it’s the most effective when I have time in the studio to document, write read and respond to various texts and follow a train of thought. I reference from texts, cutting collaging, painting singing and looking visual images and the natural world and newspaper sources. After that then some painterly action and then a moment of calm. I have a lot of works on the go at the same time.So it’s often working between various works on paper and paintings. There are always lots of ends undone so to speak, and lots of ways to re-enter the work.

Who do you consider to be an icon of our time?

Too many to mention but I’ll mention the people in the human rights field in which I have an interest - Rosa Parks and John Lewis.

What does well -being mean to you, and what do you practice?

Well -being means looking after yourself and setting boundaries for your work life balance. Essentially balancing health work and family commitments. Unfortunately for creative types they can often and justifiably have to work outside of normal “workday”. But all of these ideas have been turned on their head because of COVID and working from a distance and the fact that technology has put us all on constant availability

Anthony I am excited to share our chat below, but do you have anything else you’d like to share?

Be kind!

• https://www.instagram.com/anthony_white_paris

• Portrait of the artist by Christophe Maizou 2019 Paris