Respect

Fred Bervoets, a painter whom Tony respected and who respected Tony’s work, has an exhibition called ‘Welcome Home’. Their work has many points in common: the crowdedness, the difficulty in describing the style or direction. One description goes for both Tony and Fred: a narrative expressionist. Also both do a lot of self-portraits and to be honest, most of their works are autobiographical. You’ll find pain, despair, love and sex, art critics and the icons of friends and family. The main difference is their use of color. Fred goes mainly into dark somber tones while Tony uses the whole rainbow like in this mixed medium oil and pastel on paper from 1996. Here he also mixes his Indian heritage with his love of all things Spanish and his life in Mexico with the Matadora…