Tony Bishop


Bishop studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Elam School of Fine Art in Auckland.  Depicting touches of the artists elaborate fantasy worlds with his vibrant, cheerful colours.  He has a noted deceptively simple childlike style, presenting what may appear simple and stylised at first is in fact nothing of the sort.  The inspirational core of his work is from “childhood, growing up in rural New Zealand”, importance to him as an artist is “being able to work freely, without constraint” he comments.  Described as having a broad vision at work in his paintings of a rural paradise with motif of fluid patterns, rhythms, and repetitions, vertical and horizontal visual devices.  The work asserting sociological purpose, vernacular and literary of a story.  He comments “I strive to be readily understood.  I love to see people from various backgrounds looking at my work and chuckling as some resonance occurs within their own lives.”  He describes himself as a “contemporary folk artist, working in the present using a style that derives from a universal folk or naive technique.”  He explains he aims to create “a body of work that comprehensively describes my life.  A clear description of a state that reminds me of childhood, where it may evoke a similar response in a viewer and triggers there own stories.”

    

b 1958


(Work above)

Title: Batch At The Beach   $NZD POA    Size: 60 x 65cm   

Medium: Acrylic on board