Profile
C.S.P.W.C.: S.F.C.A.: S.C.A. A visual artist who has exhibited his drawings and paintings on four continents. Tony is possibly best known for his work which focuses on the man-made elements of our environment. His mastery of shading and texture within the interplay of light and dark makes his work immediately identifiable. These paintings with which the viewing public can easily connect are often of familiar streetscapes and beloved landmarks but have a unique sense of colour and life. His streetscapes of his adopted home-town, Toronto, have been widely exhibited and are to be found in many civic and corporate collections. A past president of the CSPWC once introduced Tony as “one of the few modern interpreters of the 18th and 19th century tradition of the travelling artist” and his frequent exhibitions of work themed to his many travels would support this description. In recent years he has had the opportunity to take part in several major painting trips and the landscape as a subject has increasingly become the focus of his work. Born: Eynsham Hall – Oxfordshire, England 1940 Education While going to university, Tony made a number of career moves but it was while working for Canadian Industries Ltd (C-I-L) that he received corporate support for his interest in the history of the City of Montreal and his love of drawing its monuments. He was commissioned to produce a map of Old Montreal and its historic sites. This was in the days when only a handful of people actually lived in the decayed area and only a few homes had been restored. The map was widely reproduced in both official languages, and was tied in with C-I-L’s restoration of the DelVecchio House and their participation in the World Fair – Expo ’67. C-I-L also used his drawings in a number of convention presentations and corporate promotions. Due to his work in Old Montreal, in 1966 he was asked to sit on the board of the Montreal Historical Society. In the mid 1960’s Tony became a member of J.A.M.M. (The Junior Assoc. of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts – Le Musée des Beaux – Arts de Montréal), a group that ran a number of exhibitions and social activities from the Museum’s Stable Gallery. This began his life-long involvement with arts centered volunteer activities. He moved to Ontario in 1968 to study at the University of Toronto and after graduation decided to try teaching for a few years. Those few years turned into twenty-eight! He initially taught at Stephen Leacock C.I., where he was a member of the art and history departments, For three years in the early 1980’s he was also involved with the C.B.C’s Institute of Scenography where he taught art history to aspiring set designers. In his spare time he worked on a number of professional theatrical events, primarily for Marlene Smith Productions, designing and painting sets and properties. Among the shows he worked on in those early days of locally developed theatre were “Tonight at 8:30”, “PIAF”, and “Dames at Sea”. In 1985 he was appointed Head of Arts at Sir Oliver Mowat Collegiate. A regular demonstrating artist in historical studies at the University of Toronto, he was asked to join the Canadian School at Cambridge University (U.K.) where for two years he was the resident art instructor and lecturer. With a small select staff, this program became one of the highlights of Tony’s academic life. He left teaching in 1998 to pursue a career as a full time painter. While he has regularly exhibited his work and been involved with the administration of a series of cultural organizations, it was his 1980 election to the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (C.S.P.W.C.) that kick started a period of concentrated involvement in the arts. Coordinating a succession of highly profitable exhibitions that linked the C.S.P.W.C. with the National Ballet of Canada, he went on to run the Society’s annual juried exhibitions for a number of years. Asked to take charge of their 1985 Diamond Jubilee celebrations, he managed to have their juried Jubilee Collection accepted into the fabled Royal Collections. The subsequent exhibition of those sixty Canadian watercolours in the Queen’s Gallery at Windsor Castle was a major coup for the country and the C.S.P.W.C. Elected President of the C.S.P.W.C. for the period 1993-1995 he went on to organize Phase two of the Royal Collection Project that saw an additional fifteen works added at Windsor Castle to mark the Society’s seventy fifth anniversary in 2000. These paintings were exhibited at Canada House London in 2001 prior to moving to the Royal Library. Tony was invited by The High Commissioner to be guest speaker at the reception where HRH The Prince of Wales formally accepted the paintings on behalf of HM The Queen. To mark the Society’s Centennial, the third and final phase of this ongoing Royal Collection Project will be the 2025 jurying and selection of twenty five paintings that will then create a total body of one hundred Canadian watercolours held in perpetuity within the Royal Collections. This four decade long project has been one of the most significant undertakings of Tony’s career.
Trusting that he will be able to continue to paint and draw for several more decades Tony has said “that looking back over the decades that have passed it is the events that I was drawn into as a volunteer that have illuminated my life experiences the most. It has been the totally unanticipated meeting with wonderful individuals, both unknown and acclaimed, that has provided some of the most searching moments of pause and reflection. I would encourage anyone to go outside of their own career paths and assist in some project with a different community …. the rewards for this “time well spent” can prove to be life changing.” Exhibitions |
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Solo Exhibitions 1967 – Galerie Place Royale, Montreal 1967 – The Del Vecchio House, Montreal 1968 – Stable Gallery, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts 1969 – Sir George Williams University Gallery, Montreal 1985 – 1987 – The Elgin Theatre during Toronto production of Cats 1987, 1988 – The Whitten Gallery, King City 1988 – The Arts & Letters Club, Toronto 1993, 1994 – The Whitten Gallery, King City 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003 – The O’Connor Gallery, Toronto 2007 – The O’Connor Gallery, Toronto 2008 – Impressions Gallery, Toronto 2011 – Yorkminster Park Gallery, Toronto |
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| Arts Organizations • The Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, elected 1980 (President 1993-1995) • The English Harbour Group (Newfoundland) 1991 • The Society of Canadian Artists, elected 1998 • The Federation of Canadian Artists (Signature Member 2002) • Polar Artists Group, 2007 • The Arts & Letters Club, Toronto |
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| Listed in the “Canada’s Who’s Who” – University of Toronto Press. | |
Tony currently travels regularly both as an individual artist and as a member of a well known painting group. He is actively involved with a number of arts related organizations and is a popular participant in fund raising activities for a number of Canadian based charitable and not-for-profit groups.
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