Dr. Gregory Hedberg Ph.D.
Curator of Contemporary Art
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York


Ant Anthony Ackrill is the only painter I know who combines an amazing ability when it comes to traditional technical skills with a very modern sense of subject matter. Painting a human navel on a silver platter in a realistic manner would appeal to both Courbet and Duchamp.

    Ackrill’s multi-figural compositions exhibit Old Master technical skills yet again there is a very modern sensibility. The figures all have a sense of being here and now even though they are rendered in a manner that would delight Correggio.

    Ackrill’s painting Queen’s Egg, places a figure in a landscape in a manner that transcends just good technical skills and verges on poetry. In the end it is this poetic quality that makes Ackrill so special and, like good poetry, makes his paintings resistant to being translated into academic prose.

Dr. Gerald M. Ackerman
Author / Art Historian
The Life and Works of Jean Leon Gerome


    Anthony Ackrill has splendid traits that support him as an artist: he is assiduous, ambitious, marvelously independent, imaginative, well-trained, cognizant of his materials: traits that back up fiercely independent and original conceptions. He has a command of the human figure, and such respect for it, that his nudes manage to contain their warm sexuality comfortably within their healthy bodies. And his technique is superb, enviable.

     A very large canvas, like Reaper, depicts a seemingly life-sized farm hand. He stands with the glow of accomplishment and self assurance, backed up by correctness of the drawing: his body, his pose, his center of balance. This simple subject and its setting are unified by a superb oil technique that creates an atmosphere linking the man with the landscape behind him: this space is created by a delicate, tender surface that is flawless: not just in its values and brushwork, but both uniform and seemingly effortless throughout. It s a great technical feat.

     Ackrill is also good with groups; he often unites several figures in the center of his canvas by the overlapping of limbs in controlled rhythms and tightness of composition. In Wanting Faith, a standing older man and a kneeling younger man triangulate the body of a young woman, evidently dying on her knees between them.

The color of sunset is seen under the low clouds in the background, and there is no faith in an afterlife, just the shock of loss and a deep, settling despair.

   Ackrill has a talent for presenting realistic, non-idealized nudes that are nonetheless heroic bodies, often modeled in deep chiaroscuro and set in mythical situations.His mythology is his own. The viewer only has a title (sometimes unfathomable) to go on; yet the events depicted rival the famous moments of well-known classical mythology in their intriguing qualities and hints of hidden depths of meaning and ritual.

    
     In Tree Lover, a young man with a splendid body lies at night under the high branches of a large tree; at first he seems either exhausted or asleep; head thrown back, his hand holding a long branch topped with leaves; he seem to be experencing moments of transcending ecstasy. The unity of figure, tree and background is lyrical, supporting the emotion of the scene while intriguing the viewer who wants to know more. A companion painting, Sky Lover, seen in drastic fore-shortening from the soles of his feet, lies before us, looking up, flattened-out to the earth in adoration. The foreshortening is extreme, and isolates the worshipers experience.

      Ackrill's rich imagination, which places accurately painted nudes and figures into enveloping surroundings, resonate with his very personal mythology. The beauty of his realistic nudes make identifying with easy, and forces our questioning of them. He has not simply rejected traditional subject matter, he has added to it in a personal, modern way.