"I first met Anthony Christian in 1964..." by Reggie Oliver


I first met Anthony Christian in 1964 when I was twelve and he was nineteen. He had got to know my parents when he painted a portrait of a great friend of theirs. That portrait, despite its technical brilliance, was not universally popular because Anthony had revealed an inner sadness in the subject which many of his friends - though not my parents - were unwilling to acknowledge. He went on to paint and draw both my parents and myself and became a good friend, never for a moment talking down to the very naive teenager that I was. He influenced me profoundly because he was the first person whom I met, perhaps the only person I have known, who was and remains one hundred percent artist. That is to say: every fibre and impulse of his being is geared towards the creation of beautiful and memorable things. This accounts for the outstanding integrity and originality of his work; it also accounts for the extraordinary roller coaster of his career. He has never once pandered to fashion when his outstanding technical gifts alone could so easily have earned him golden rewards. That is why his work, though it has developed and evolved, remains of a piece and demonstrates a unique vision: sensual and yet austerely beautiful, passionate yet refined, witty and playful too. At the heart of his work, I believe, are his incomparable gifts as a draughtsman, evident from his earliest pieces, such as the Battle Scene, to his most recent masterpiece “The Crucifixion of the Female Principle.” REGGIE OLIVER http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggie_Oliver