Tormented World Painting

The transformation that takes place in the development of making art - in any form - is something that is never fully understood. Even the artists themselves can find it difficult to articulate the process by which they create - and exactly what their motivation and influences have been. Creators can also find it difficult to explain what it is that drives them to do what they do. In the end you have to accept that the artists have a private mind and what you view is just the result of their secret world. Anthony Bingham was born in the small seaside town of New Romney, Kent, and was to receive his only formal training at the Northampton School of Art and Design. In the summer of 1980 he gained his diploma and set out on a career in design and advertising. In the late eighties he became a founding partner in a design company serving a mixture of local, national and international businesses. In late 2000 he had resigned from the business, and thereafter undertook contract work. A few years later he started experimenting with his own unique style of art, as well as, undertaking an art history degree. Interestingly, his early work did not translate into the usual methods of making art with pencils and paper, water-colour or paint on canvas, instead his firsts works were produced on plywood. The surfaces were sealed with a varnish before using a small hand held roller to apply household emulsion as the primer. He would then apply - by means of the roller- acrylic paint until the desired background effect was achieved - over which he would then apply pure acrylic paint with the rubber chisel, building up layers on top of layers until at some point he felt the artwork was complete. All of this was undertaken laid flat on an old ironing board. He then went on to develop what has become known as his industrial canvases. These canvases are constructed out of wooden pasting tables covered in decorating cloth. Pigment and PVA would then be mixed and random shapes and patterns created on the surface by a spoon. Once dried the whole painting would be covered in white emulsion and then acrylic paint, washed with course material and finally sanded. From the beginning, Bingham has instinctively looked for new materials and techniques in order to say something new, and has spent a vast amount of time proving that his vision for the material or technique that could work.