Anthony Chapman
Nationality: IE
Currently Living: Dublin
Member Since: 6/11/2009
I did try to get into art school in the late eighties, but as I hadn't finished secondary school, I found that I wasn't even eligible to apply.
I continued working and wound up as an actor. My first, and to date my only play, was produced in Cardiff in 1991, I also exhibited my first paintings around this time.
In the mid nineties I had some poetry published in a newspaper in Galway, I did some plays, some work as a movie extra, and finally got my big break in 2001, then the movie fell apart, and I found I couldn't even get in to audition for parts.
I was still doing art through all this time, and I did have some interest from a gallery here in Dublin, but I didn't see it as a realistic option, as if acting is?
I also wrote a couple of movies, one of which got some interest from an agent in Hollywood, who subsequently fell out with the person who had put me in contact, and my work was caught in the crossfire.
Please understand, this is history, not a whinge.
So, there you have it, twenty years of mistakes, all leading back to the start.
I don't know if I have a compulsion to make art, but I often find myself captured by colours, shapes and juxtapositions, and I was once stopped in my tracks by a tree with purple blossoms overhanging a sidestreet on the way to Rathmines.
Or the sea so calm, the clouds so low, I imagines horses rcing along the edge of the world, kicking up a spray in their wake.
When I make drawings or painting of people, what I'm interested in is a psychological moment, and for me that's all in the eyes, and as soon as I've got that, I tend to stop, so quite often my work is left unfinished.
