| Ask Tony Gill, 39, what the role of the artist is and he’ll answer: “Shaman.” Healing through art is exactly what Gill has been doing for the last two decades. Having grown up in England, Gill first decided he wanted to be an artist when he was at an exhibition with his mother. She pointed at a painting and said: “See Tony you can get away with anything if you call yourself an artist.” That was a sticking point. Gill went to Chelsea in London during the 80s where he majored in painting. |  |
Artist as Shaman – Guinevere Johnson
Among his early influences, Gill includes Andy Warhol, Keith Haring and Julian Schnabel as well as Picasso’s “Musketeer” paintings (in particular the squiggly beards.)
After a few solo shows in London and Paris, Gill left Chelsea before commencement and moved to Trinidad, seeking enlightenment. While in Trinidad, Gill lived primarily with Hindu communities where he worked painting the walls of Hindu households with hexes and mandalas. It was during this time that Gill became interested in color theory, an interest which grew into a passion and eventually lead him to write the book with his then partner Christina Bornstein: Color Energy: How Color Can Transform your Life.
This color work is prominent in Gill’s recent paintings, which often have a quad of color fields in the background, representing the energy play of the painting’s central figure. Even more color-focused is Gill’s “Responsibility Compositions (It’s all my Fault).”
Tony Gill’s “Responsibility Compositions” face head-on the terror-based society in which we live and then seek to resolve it. Start with the idea that there is no real conflict; just color frequency, take away the storyline of war and you will see only colors. If you believe that consciousness is all there is and that we create our own reality, you could believe that we have a radical responsibility to resolve the conflict on an esoteric level. Working off of a grid, Gill uses Gaffer tape to construct parallel lines that are the colors he sees when meditating on the war and society’s general terror culture and how to resolve it.
Traditionally, Gaffer tape is a medium that is used to bind together the power cables on a movie set. Gill, like a shaman, feels that certain tools, when used over and over again for a particular purpose, then take on that energy. Thus the gaffer tape becomes a vehicle for creative energy, bringing forces together so that a creative act can happen. To Gill, this act occurs at once on an esoteric level; and, at the same time, results in a painting whose formal qualities become visually significant.
Guinevere Johnson: Why painting? What makes its history compelling to you?
Tony Gill: I consider my art to be an autopsy. My works are not; “why did it die; or is it dead?” But, “why did it ever live?” I think of paintings as magic.
GJ: Historically, many scholars have named the artist as mirror to society. What role do you think the artist has in contemporary society?
TG: The artist is the shaman. It is also the job of the artist to navigate through uncharted territories; to expand upon the visual vocabulary.
GJ: What is your primary medium?
TG: I use acrylic, oil and gaffer tape primarily, and often all three on one canvas.
GJ: Why did you move to America and Brooklyn in particular to paint? Why not have stayed in London?
TG: “I wanted to be an American painter in the American tradition. You hear of all these artists and particularly painters from Germany, Russia and all over Europe—but, once they’re having shows in America, they become American painters. I wanted to be part of that tradition. You know the wine, the big families, the backyard dinners. I moved to Brooklyn in 1995 because of the influences I had had growing up in London. Hip Hop was a big part of my life both in prep school and university, and it was all coming from Brooklyn. I wanted to feel more a part of it.
GJ: What artists are you interested in now? Is there anybody you are currently working with?
TG: I’m primarily interested in art that navigates the general public’s eyes and minds into otherwise overlooked areas and ideas. I think historically this is what the artist has done.
GJ: Picasso did it with Cubism, John and Yoko used “Bed-Ins,” and, recently, many artists and activists have been forming collaborations to draw the public eye towards political issues.
TG: Yes, exactly. I am interested in healers and shamans and the work that they are doing. I believe their work is art and that the public is becoming more and more interested in their work as art. I am currently working with a farm in Great Britain. We are working with greenhouses and how the effect of creative visualization affects plant growth.
GJ: Yeah, a lot of people indigenous to South America have been practicing this for centuries. They say that the more time you spend focusing your attention on a garden, the larger the plants will grow and the more nutrients they possess.
TG: Yes, well, this is it. Except, in this case, I’m focusing my attention on the garden from over the ocean. There is an identical garden, which is being tended, but without extra attention or energy focused on it. A scientist from one of the local universities comes to measure the garden’s progress every week. We are finding that the vegetables are significantly larger and that they are also more nutritious.
GJ: Just as artists and activists have come together as collectives, so too are scientists and artists.
TG: Yes, exactly. And I think that there is something particularity English and humorous about obscenely large vegetables. We may even show them at garden shows.
GJ: I look forward to seeing photos of the prize-winners.
