Anthony Gadd has carried a passion for Art from his early school days in the Eastern Cape. Initially his focus was more on watercolours, with nudes, wildlife and landscapes as his primary subjects. Anthony has an exceptionally rich spectrum of professional and personal experience, abilities and talents to draw from.

Having spent nearly two decades as a Commercial Artist, Creative Director and later Director of his own advertising agency, Anthony longed to spend more time creatively. In 2004 he stopped working in advertising and following his passion, began to paint full time.

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Personal Motivation

"I believe we start by learning to express ourselves creatively in the physical form. If we pursue this passion with courage, diligence and discipline, we come to the realization that we are the canvas: - and as such, are both the creator and the creation. Creativity then becomes who we are, not just what we hang on the wall.” - Ann Gadd

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Moving away from the realism of his earlier work, Anthony has taken sections of road maps of areas in South Africa as a basis for his current work. It is interesting to see that the areas of maps in the townships produce far more organic, lively and less inhibited works, while the roads in the cities are not nearly as vibrant, being formal and more rigid in structure – a mirror of the people who created them. These areas traditionally have housing made of galvanised steel. The method of working with rust on iron has carries with it the visual literacy of the surrounding countryside. As if one was viewing the scene from an aerial perspective. Names such as Tembisa ext. 5 or Ezikhaleni, each road “map” is a metaphor for the question “where are we going what road should we take

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Working in bright dynamic colour combinations, Anthony also continues to do landscapes in acrylics, focusing on areas of the Cape and Karroo. He has matured his original, more realistic style to become looser, fresher and more abstract than his earlier works.