Informal Relations-Anthony White at The Cat Street Gallery

Catalogue Essay Extract by Sharne Wolff November 2012

This new exhibition of White’s paintings, entitled Informal Relations, is concerned with capturing fleeting moments in nature. The title of his show is deliberately ambiguous and White’s ‘informal relations’ exist on several levels – form and colour, artist and paint, artist and canvas. New experiences in foreign places and the soft northern hemisphere light have led to fresh perspectives which the artist has vigorously expressed on canvas. Are these glimpses of landscapes, memories of places visited or simply pure abstraction?
White’s paintings are spontaneous and not literal readings of anything. Through form and colour they represent an unrestrained rendition of certain snapshots in time. In Pala and Cache disorderly shapes and soft edges organise and fill space while in works like Araignee and Loophole dark and hard-edged overpainting creates depth.

In the past White has painted in thick textural layers but for this series he’s paid more attention to the authenticity of the paint. White’s freedom in expression has generated some magical arrangements. From the flat cornflower blues and pistachio greens of Antibes where composition relies on contrast, White shifts gear to Downtown and it’s harmony of blues punctuated with black.

Through both his method and recent experience White has emerged as an international artist whose unique vision of the world speaks a universal language. As Piet Mondrian once said, "We should not see beyond nature. Rather, we should, so to speak, see through nature. We should see more deeply, see abstractly, and above all universally.