Anton Chapman studied Fine Art at Rhodes University,
Grahamstown, South Africa, completing a Diploma in Fine Art in 1979
before travelling to Rome to take up a Scholarship year at the
Accademia Di Belle Arti. Returning to South Africa, Chapman
lectured in both Painting and History of Art at Rhodes University
before completing his Masters in Fine Art (with distinction) in
1987. He continued to lecture in Painting at the University of
Durban, Westville, before immigrating to New Zealand to take up a
teaching position at the Whitecliffe College of Arts and Design,
where he taught from 1994-2004. Chapman is now a full-time artist
and private tutor.
Chapman's work is distinguished by his dramatic painterly touch.
Powerful, gestural swathes of paint convey his engagement with the
medium as a vehicle for colour, texture and expression across
compositions ranging from the figurative to the loosest of
landscapes.
Chapman's style brings life to his subject matter through an
intense and emotive process of building, layering, scraping and
brusquely applying paint - the physicality of Chapman's work cannot
be ignored.
As long-standing NZ Herald Art Critic TJ McNamara wrote in 2004
of Chapman's work Turangawaewae:
In Turangawaewae the paint is applied in big choppy
gestures that set our imagination working on rock and hill and sky
and the flow of water. This is expressed in thick paint, handled
with vivid spontaneity. It conveys joy in the act of painting and
in the possibilities of paint as a medium for both abstraction and
suggestion.
Chapman has held numerous solo exhibitions in New Zealand and
was selected in 2005 as a finalist in the Wallace Trust Art
Awards.