Tony Rumball - Feature Artist

Artist Tony Rumball is frequently inspired by random assemblages of objects and unexpected encounters.

For 25 years, Tony has met to paint with friends in Stratford. A number of his paintings arise from a spontaneous response to assorted props brought each week by fellow artists. One day a collection of assorted hats, another day an iris and a Versace scarf, another day a bike or fish heads – all seemingly mundane and unexceptional objects, transformed by the artist into unique, often whimsical, works of art.

The foreign-country feel to some of Tony’s work arises, in part, from backpacking trips to Europe with his family. Using a pocket notebook to record “unexpected things” along the way, the people and their circumstances encountered in Bavaria, Gallipoli, Florence and the Basque Country all feature in his works. When viewing Tony’s paintings, we too feel somewhat like tourists in a strange new land – looking on, as his strong, sure characters go about their daily lives.

Working on stretched canvas laid on a broad table, Tony swiftly draws his objects and figures in Indian ink, applied with a bristle brush. Over these first markings he applies layers of oil paint with a palette knife, deftly scraping back each new application to expose the texture of the canvas underneath. Few of his paintings are reworked – the majority begun and completed within the space of a few days. And it is this apparent confidence and lightness of touch that is so appealing in Tony’s works – with a seeming few strokes, he conveys both emotion and subtle humour not often seen in “serious art”.