Arty Farty Friday ~ Anthony Green R.A.

Anthony Green R.A.
(born 30 September 1939) is an English realist painter and printmaker best known for his paintings of his own middle-class domestic life.


From Alfred Hickling in The Guardian, 2001
(SNIP) - -

Anthony Green may be one of our least fashionable senior painters, but he is no square - nor any regular shape at all. Green is a homespun visionary, the Stanley Spencer of the Pop generation, who decided in the 1960s that since he did not dream in rectangles, he should not paint in them either.

Green's highly keyed images have a peculiar intensity, the kind of second sight that comes from contemplating your cabbage patch for too long. He paints his cottage in Little Eversden, Cambridgeshire, and domestic life with his wife Mary with an obsessiveness that makes Spencer's relationship with Cookham look like a passing interest. But it is neither this, nor the Pre-Raphaelite palette, that makes his work so distinctive; rather it is his hallucinatory tendency to twist the very outlines of the paintings askew.

Many more examples at Google Image.

Mr Green loves angles doesn't he? He loves angles as much as Jean Arp the sculptor, featured Friday 15 September, seemed to dislike them!



A 12 noon natal chart (as no time of birth is known) for the day of Anthony Green's birth, 30 September 1939, in Luton, Bedfordshire, UK. Moon position and rising sign here will not be accurate.

It's tempting to relate the artist's love of angles to the several hard (square, 90 degree) angles in his natal chart, but that could well be simple coincidence. A more reliable astro-indication of the man's personality is the fact that his natal Sun, Mercury and Venus were conjoined in charming, Venus-ruled Libra. There's an opposition from jovial Jupiter in impulsive Aries, indicating that while of a charming and tactful nature, this is balanced by a fun, ebullient side. I'll hazard a guess that Mr Green was born before noon, putting Moon somewhat earlier in Aries, which would further underline a warm and enthusiastic nature. There's lots more, but that'll do for now!

Snips from this interview highlight something of Anthony Green's personality:

.......The man himself exuded enthusiasm, warmth and charm, similar to the atmosphere he creates in his vivid narrative paintings. However the magic well and truly begins when he speaks to you; it’s a flow of eloquent words delivered with passion and bursting with excitement. The first thing I notice when interviewing Anthony Green is how utterly down to earth he is, despite his eminence in the art world. He has achieved success on a grand scale; from being elected Royal Academician, being appointed trustee of the Royal Academy and being elected to the New English Art Club, to name but a few........

But what inspires such a talented artist? His answer is simple: “Love”. Green describes the dilemma that hit him in 1960 after he left art school, “I didn’t know what artist I wanted to be, I could be Picasso, or Damien Hirst, or Tracey Emin. So I came up with a question; what am I really interested in? And the answer was; I had fallen in love with this girl – so basically I was a young man in love and I thought I ought to be painting about that.” And that is exactly what he did. The first few paintings of his future wife were very raw, but Green says that once you’ve got the reason for being an artist, then you can start refining your work and it becomes a journey through your life........

Green is keen to point out that he never got up in the morning and thought; “What art shall I create today?” he simply got up and thought; “I’m telling a story about me, and my life.” This is how he creates such personal and emotive paintings: art is his life and life is his art. Green says “Everyday that happened I was a day older and it was a different story. As I’ve gone through life, the story has evolved, so there is always something fresh to add to the mix.” Almost all of Green’s paintings in his current exhibition portray his wife, daughter, himself and his early married life, as “That is what I care most about in the world”.