The Ancestors

The Ancestors by Anthony Carey, a dark blue mixed-media painting with two large fragmented faces and smaller forms emerging from a densely layered, textured surface
  • Detail of The Ancestors showing a large blue face and a smaller skull-like form emerging from densely layered paint.

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  • Surface detail of The Ancestors showing fragmented forms, embedded materials and flashes of orange within dark blue and turquoise paint.

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  • Detail of The Ancestors showing a partially concealed pale-blue face beside exposed black mesh and broken layers of paint.

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  • Detail of The Ancestors showing a dark wolf-like form emerging above heavily textured blue paint with orange accents.

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  • Close-up of The Ancestors showing a pale fragmented skull surrounded by dark blue paint, embedded fragments and fine red-orange marks.

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About the work

The Ancestors developed through repeated layering, scraping and reconstruction. Acrylic paint, embedded mesh and dried fragments from earlier palettes accumulated across the canvas, creating a surface that feels worn, broken and excavated. The faces were not planned or based on particular people. They began to appear through the process of working and reworking the painting, as though they had been held within its layers.


As the figures emerged, they brought to mind people who had existed before me. Some faces became distinct, while others remained incomplete or almost disappeared into the surrounding blue. The title arose intuitively from this gathering of unknown presences rather than from any attempt to portray particular relatives or construct a history around them.


My understanding of absence has changed through personal loss. I no longer experience those who have died as belonging entirely to the past. They remain present in memory, but also in the ways they have shaped how we think, respond and understand ourselves. Although the figures in The Ancestors are not representations of people I have known, the painting reflects this sense that the living and the dead do not occupy wholly separate spaces.


From a distance, two larger faces hold the composition together. Closer inspection reveals smaller features and fragmented forms, including some that I only recognised after the painting was completed. Different viewers have found different presences within it. The work remains one of my favourites because its darkness never becomes entirely readable: it continues to reveal something without surrendering all of its uncertainty.


Artwork details
2026
Acrylic, plaster, silicone and mesh on canvas
100 × 100 cm framed
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