Anthony Griffis is a self-taught artist whose works have been hung in galleries alongside such notables as Wendy Sharpe and the late Adam Cullen.
Over more than twenty years, he has had more than a dozen solo exhibitions, and been featured in several group shows.
His works are held in corporate and private collections in Australia, Europe and the USA.
Explosive yet pensive. Visceral yet cerebral. There's a raw physicality to nearly all of Anthony Griffis' works, coupled with a restless intelligence. As one gallery director says, 'Anthony's work displays a sophisticated control of mark-making that takes the work beyond surface superficiality and decoration, into the realm of deep physicality.' Another says, 'Never fussy or over-worked, Anthony's work is like a surge of emotion.'
Whether it's pouring black coffee and red wine over textured paper, layering thick swipes of paint on canvas or carving images into paint using a screwdriver, Griffis is always probing, always questioning.
The finished works are the result of painstaking editing. That process is obvious in the finished works, with previous layers still partly visible. Griffis adds and subtracts, until everything making up the work co-exists with the desired depth and intensity.
Griffis’ most recent works were inspired by a chance visit to the Tito Bustillo Cave on Spain’s northern coast, where stunning examples of Paleolithic art remain beautifully intact after more than 10,000 years.
Seeing the primitive results of that most basic human urge – to make a mark –had a profound effect on Griffis, who is now even more driven to strip away and simplify in his own work.