What inspires your work?

My work is shaped by themes of belonging, memory, resilience, and transformation. I draw on personal experience, but I want the paintings to open into a space where viewers can connect their own memories, emotions, and questions of identity to the work. Some paintings centre on the figure, while others use landscape, atmosphere, or architectural space to explore those same ideas. Learn about the inspiration behind my abstract art

What themes run through your paintings?

Belonging, displacement, memory, solitude, endurance, and healing are recurring themes in my work. I’m interested in the tension between fragility and strength, and in how a painting can hold both personal feeling and shared human experience at the same time. Explore emotional themes in the Belonging series

What does “belonging” mean in your work?

For me, belonging is both personal and universal. It is about connection, identity, memory, and the search for place, especially in moments of change or uncertainty. In some paintings that comes through the human figure; in others it emerges through landscape, horizon lines, weathered surfaces, and spaces that feel remembered, unsettled, or in transition. Explore the Belonging Series

How does Jung influence your practice?

Carl Jung’s ideas around archetypes, the unconscious, and inner transformation have been an important influence on my practice. I’m not interested in illustrating theory directly. Instead, I use painting to explore symbolic tension, ambiguity, fragmentation, and emergence. This allows meaning to develop through process, material, and image rather than fixed explanation. Read the full article on Jungian influence

Do your paintings always include figures?

No. While the figure remains an important part of my work, I’m equally interested in how landscape, shoreline, city space, and abstraction can carry emotion and meaning. Sometimes place itself often becomes psychological. A space of memory, distance, migration, waiting, or possibility.

What materials do you use?

I work with acrylic, plaster, industrial adhesives, mesh, and other mixed media materials to build textured surfaces. In some works I also use silicone or hessian, depending on what the painting requires. These materials allow me to layer, scrape back, cut into, and rebuild the surface so that the work carries both physical presence and emotional weight. See materials in the biography Explore textured works in the portfolio

Why is texture so important in your paintings?

Texture is central to how I think and work. It allows the painting to hold traces of time, memory, damage, repair, and change. I often build and disrupt the surface through layering, scraping, and excavation, so the final image feels discovered rather than simply depicted. Learn more about Carey's use of materials in his biography

Has your work been exhibited internationally?

Yes. My work has been shown internationally, including at the Chianciano Biennale in Italy, as well as in exhibitions in Ireland,Europe, UK, USA, Canada, and Australia. See Anthony Carey's full exhibition history

Biography

Anthony Carey standing beside a large abstract painting at an exhibition opening

about anthony

Anthony Carey is an Irish artist based in Dublin. His work explores memory, grief, belonging, and healing through painting that moves between abstraction, figuration, and landscape. Using layered surfaces, fractured forms, and atmospheric space, he creates work that reflects vulnerability, resilience, and transformation.

Painting began for Carey as a way of processing experiences that resisted language. Earlier works often carried a strong physical intensity, with paint, plaster, and mixed media pushed, scraped, and reworked across the surface. Over time, his practice has shifted towards a quieter and more spacious visual language, where stillness, ambiguity, and emotional atmosphere play a greater role.

While the human figure remains part of his practice, more recent works explore landscape as a symbolic and emotional space. Drawing on memory, travel, awe, and disorientation, Carey’s paintings use place, weather, silence, and distance to reflect inner states of loss, endurance, and reorientation.

His work is also informed by mythology, spirituality, and Jungian thought, particularly ideas of archetype, threshold, and the relationship between inner and outer landscape.

His paintings have been exhibited in Ireland and internationally, including at the Chianciano Biennale in 2022, and are held in private collections across Europe, North America, and Australia.

Artist Statement

My work begins with experiences that are difficult to resolve in words. Painting became a way of staying with grief, memory, distance, and emotional weight without needing to explain them away. It gave me a surface that could hold tension, fracture, uncertainty, and the possibility of repair.

I work across abstraction, figuration, and landscape. In some paintings, the figure appears fractured or only partially present. In others, the emotional weight is carried by place through horizon, weather, shoreline, silence, or traces of human presence. I am interested in how both the figure and the landscape can act as containers for memory, vulnerability, belonging, and transformation.

My earlier work was more forceful and materially driven, with paint, plaster, and mixed media pushed, dragged, layered, and scraped back. Over time, the work has become quieter and more spacious. I have become increasingly interested in atmosphere, stillness, and ambiguity, and in allowing meaning to emerge through process rather than fixed explanation.

Mythology, spirituality, and Jungian archetypes continue to inform my practice, not as symbols to be decoded, but as underlying emotional and psychological currents. I am drawn to threshold states: moments of change, uncertainty, solitude, and reorientation, where loss and possibility can exist together.

What grounds the work is a belief that painting can offer a space of reflection: somewhere to stay with what hurts, what lingers, and what remains unresolved. I want the work to hold that space quietly, and to leave room for viewers to meet it through their own memories and experience.

SELECTED CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

Award Winner – Chianciano Biennale, Italy, 2022 (Abstract Category)
Solo Exhibitions – Belonging: A Quest for Home (2024), Small Talk (2022)
International Group Shows – Ireland, USA, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Australia
Publications – Connection, Letters from Dublin (2020), Ask Me Arse (2020 & 2025 ed.)
Film Recognition – 10+ international awards for Story, a one-minute film

View Full CV

"While Monet painted the changes within the work itself; Carey records the reverberations directly on his work… both sharing a core appreciation for color, texture, light, shadow, and transitions. I hope you enjoy his day in this moment."

- Jennifer Gillie Cutshall, Curator, Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, Oregon, USA.

Questions answered

What inspires your work?
My work is shaped by themes of belonging, memory, resilience, and transformation. I draw on personal experience, but I want the paintings to open into a space where viewers can connect their own memories, emotions, and questions of identity to the work. Some paintings centre on the figure, while others use landscape, atmosphere, or architectural space to explore those same ideas.

Learn about the inspiration behind my abstract art
What themes run through your paintings?
Belonging, displacement, memory, solitude, endurance, and healing are recurring themes in my work. I’m interested in the tension between fragility and strength, and in how a painting can hold both personal feeling and shared human experience at the same time.

Explore emotional themes in the Belonging series
What does “belonging” mean in your work?
For me, belonging is both personal and universal. It is about connection, identity, memory, and the search for place, especially in moments of change or uncertainty. In some paintings that comes through the human figure; in others it emerges through landscape, horizon lines, weathered surfaces, and spaces that feel remembered, unsettled, or in transition.

Explore the Belonging Series
How does Jung influence your practice?
Carl Jung’s ideas around archetypes, the unconscious, and inner transformation have been an important influence on my practice. I’m not interested in illustrating theory directly. Instead, I use painting to explore symbolic tension, ambiguity, fragmentation, and emergence. This allows meaning to develop through process, material, and image rather than fixed explanation.

Read the full article on Jungian influence
Do your paintings always include figures?
No. While the figure remains an important part of my work, I’m equally interested in how landscape, shoreline, city space, and abstraction can carry emotion and meaning. Sometimes place itself often becomes psychological. A space of memory, distance, migration, waiting, or possibility.
What materials do you use?
I work with acrylic, plaster, industrial adhesives, mesh, and other mixed media materials to build textured surfaces. In some works I also use silicone or hessian, depending on what the painting requires. These materials allow me to layer, scrape back, cut into, and rebuild the surface so that the work carries both physical presence and emotional weight.

See materials in the biography

Explore textured works in the portfolio
Why is texture so important in your paintings?
Texture is central to how I think and work. It allows the painting to hold traces of time, memory, damage, repair, and change. I often build and disrupt the surface through layering, scraping, and excavation, so the final image feels discovered rather than simply depicted.

Learn more about Carey's use of materials in his biography
Has your work been exhibited internationally?
Yes. My work has been shown internationally, including at the Chianciano Biennale in Italy, as well as in exhibitions in Ireland,Europe, UK, USA, Canada, and Australia.

See Anthony Carey's full exhibition history

View Full CV
Anthony Carey
Born in Dublin, Ireland
Currently lives and works in Dublin, Ireland
Email: hello@anthonycareyart.com
Website: www.anthonycareyart.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/anthonycareyart

EDUCATION
Current: BA in Creative Arts with OCA – University of Creative Arts, Barnsley, UK.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2024 — Belonging: A Quest for Home, Scariff Library Gallery, Mountshannon, Clare, Ireland.
2022 — Small Talk, Icon Factory, Dublin, Ireland.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2025 — 6 x 6, RoCo Art Centre, Rochester, New York, USA.
2024 — 6 x 6, RoCo Art Centre, Rochester, New York, USA.
2024 — Art for Gaza, The Copperhouse Gallery, Dublin, Ireland.
2023 — Open Studio, Dublin, Ireland.
2023 — Art at the Mill, Berkeley Gallery, Grennan Mill, Thomastown, Kilkenny, Ireland.
2023 — Summer of Love, Courthouse Gallery, Ennistymon, Co. Clare, Ireland.
2023 — Mountshannon Arts Festival, Mountshannon, Co. Clare, Ireland.
2023 — 6 x 6, RoCo Art Centre, Rochester, New York, USA.
2023 — 10th Annual Abstract Sanctuary, Verum Ultimum Gallery, Portland, Oregon, USA.
2023 — Art Is, Kefi Art Gallery, Toronto, Canada.
2023 — Group Show, GalleryX, Dublin, Ireland.
2022 — Chianciano Art Biennale, Museo d’Arte di Chianciano, Tuscany, Italy. Award in Abstract Category.
2022 — Art at the Mill, Berkeley Gallery, Thomastown, Kilkenny, Ireland.
2022 — The Garden of Loss and Triumph, Artaviso, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
2022 — Door to Door, Artaviso, Lite-Haus Galerie & Projektraum, Berlin, Germany.
2021 — Art in Brooklyn, Brooklyn Art Cave, New York, USA.
2021 — Pluid Project, The Cowshed, Farmleigh, Phoenix Park, Dublin, Ireland.
2021 — Sculpture in the Garden, Berkeley Gallery, Kilkenny, Ireland.
2021 — Newsprint, Three Works, Scarborough, UK.
2021 — London Art Biennale, Chelsea Old Town Hall, London, UK.
2021 — Newsprint Exhibition, Three Works, Scarborough, UK.
2021 — Hope, Fragmented Collective, Glasgow, UK. Virtual exhibition.
2020 — Door to Door (UK & Europe), Artaviso. Virtual exhibition.
2020 — Art & Architecture: Uncovering Libraries & Collections, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
2020 — Artist Spotlight, Sauvage Gallery. Virtual exhibition.
2019 — The Christmas Fair, Icon Factory, Dublin, Ireland.
2019 — Art & Architecture: Uncovering Libraries & Collections, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
2019 — Sculpture in Context, National Botanic Gardens, Dublin, Ireland.
2018 — Showcase, 30 Years, Gallery@OXO, London, UK.
2018 — Art & Architecture: Uncovering Libraries & Collections, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios, Dublin, Ireland.
2018 — Trasna 8, Courthouse Gallery and Studios, Co. Clare, Ireland.

FILM
Story, a one-minute experimental film, has been officially selected as a finalist or nominee at film festivals in London, Berlin, Tokyo, Lisbon, Rome, Los Angeles, Bali, Toronto, and Vancouver.
2021 — Imagine Rain Independent Film Awards, California, USA. Best Experimental Short — Winner.
2021 — Great Message International Film Festival, Mumbai, India. Best Smartphone Film — Winner.
2021 — Tagore International Film Festival, West Bengal, India. Best One Minute Film — Winner.
2021 — Art Film Awards, Skopje, Macedonia. Best Super Short Film — Winner.
2021 — Art Film Awards, Skopje, Macedonia. Best Poster — Winner.
2021 — World Film Carnival. Best Experimental Film — Winner. Best One Minute Film — Winner.
2021 — Virgin Spring Cinefest, West Bengal, India / Singapore. Best One Minute Film — Winner.
2021 — Druk International Film Festival. Best One Minute Film — Winner.
2021 — 1st Monthly Film Festival, Belgrade, Serbia. Honourable Mention.
2021 — Lule International Film Festival, Luleå, Sweden. Semi-Finalist.

FUNDRAISING
2025 — ArtHouse, in aid of Outhouse Dublin.
2024 — One in Four, Dublin.
2024 — ArtHouse, in aid of Outhouse Dublin.
2024 — So This Is Early Onset Bowel Cancer, The Loft Gallery, Brisbane, Australia.
2023 — One in Four, Dublin.
2023 — Twitter Art Exhibit, supporting Urban Native Youth Association, Vancouver, Canada.
2023 — Outside the Box, RHA, supporting Scoop Foundation, Dublin, Ireland.
2022 — ArtHouse, in aid of Outhouse Dublin.
2022 — Incognito, in aid of Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation.
2022 — Twitter Art Exhibit, supporting The Encephalitis Society, The Hiscox Building, York, UK.
2021 — Incognito, in aid of Jack and Jill Children’s Foundation.
2021 — ArtHouse, in aid of Outhouse Dublin.
2021 — Twitter Art Exhibit, in aid of LINC, Cheltenham, UK.
2021 — Pluid Project, Dublin, Ireland.
2020 — Inside Out Homeshow, in aid of The Coombe Children’s Hospital.
2020 — ArtHouse, in aid of Outhouse Dublin.

BOOKS
2018 — Connection, Anthony Carey, Dublin, Ireland.
2020 — Letters from Dublin, Anthony Carey and Stephen Carey, Dublin, Ireland.
2020 — Ask Me Arse and Other Useful Phrases, Anthony Carey and Becca Carey, Dublin, Ireland.
2025 — Ask Me Arse and Other Useful Phrases, Second Edition, Anthony Carey and Becca Carey, Dublin, Ireland.

REVIEWS
Whelan, Ken. Finglas Connection, Northside People Sunday, 2 September 2018.
Whelan, Ken. Author Writes Letters from Dublin, Northside People Sunday, 7 January 2020.

PUBLICATIONS
2021 — Red Sails in a Covid Urban Landscape, Artists Responding To, Issue 6.
2021 — Opinion, Haus-a-Rest, Issue 13: The Uncanny.

COLLECTIONS
Works held in private collections in Ireland, the USA, Canada, Mexico, Australia, the UK, Germany, and Greece.