Tony's work

The Kiss, painted in Hoboken. Shown in Lineart 1998 Ghent.

Of this time, but no part of a any school or direction, makes Tony Mafia a lonely painter, lonely in his art. He paints the world as the world reveals itself to him, in a passionate, driven way, using those techniques that serve his purpose best in the expression of his feelings and insights. He plays the full pallet of colours, materials and styles that an experienced painter has at the tip of his fingers. What the French poet Queneau says about poetry is here applicable to painting: It is a means to help our deficient reason (raison déficiente) in learning the unveiled truth. Although Tony Mafia’s work stems from his singular experience, the result is universal. This universe is shown in a questioning search in a wide range of subjects. Each canvas and each drawing is a “finished piece of art” and in such constitutes a temporary but certain answer. In his paintings he shuns the too slick, too finished and too easy and resolutely turns too an effect that seems primitive without being naive however. Just as the way Lost Canyon strikes us:


The work of this painter can be more or less dealt with in following broad categories of subjects: Painting, Circus and Harlequins, Paintings influenced by his Native American heritage (Honandaga Cherokee), Religious, Spanish/Mexican themes, Nudes, Political works, abstracts. This is by no mean exhaustive for the work Tony Mafia paints. A separate post will be written about the landscapes and their function in this painter’s work.