Artist Wants To Make Others Feel Seen Through Work
Artist Wants To Make Others Feel Seen Through Work
By Tia Carol Jones
Anthony Bartley’s journey with art started as a child, drawing his favorite characters from anime, cartoon and video games. It was something that his mother encouraged, because it was something she did when she was younger.
Known creatively as FadingRoyality, Bartley’s first solo exhibition, Words I’ve Never Said, is currently being displayed at Connect Gallery, located at 1451 E. 53rd St., through May 23rd.
The name FadingRoyalty came from him reading the series Remembrance of Earth’s Past, which includes the book Three Body Problem that was turned into a series on Netflix. He said the name is an admission of what legacy means to him.
Bartley described the art exhibit as a eulogy to relationships that have passed, whether it was because the person actually passed or they are just physically separated from him emotionally, and the things he wished he could have said and the things he wished he was emotionally intelligent to know to have said.
“It’s kind of a release for me at this point; two years of therapeutic art making and now kind of giving it to people who have been through similar experiences but may not have seen it done this way or may not have been able to voice it themselves, and can now see it visually,” he said.
Words I’ve Never Said is an immersive experience where visitors are greeted with a prompt and with each of the 20 paintings, they can respond to the prompt by placing a sticky note on the wall next to the painting. FadingRoyalty wants to see the walls of the art gallery filled with sticky notes of people sharing their experiences so that others can see that they are not alone.
He wants the notes to be a physical representation of the people who were there and what they’ve been through. He said the fun part of the exhibit is having people share their experiences and being able to connect through those experiences.
“It’s a record of what they saw when they saw this piece, which to me is just as important as what I put on the canvas,” he said.
As a non-traditional art maker who didn’t have a traditional pathway into art, Fading Royalty wanted the people who are observing his work and relating to the work to be a part of the work. With Words I’ve Never Said, Fading Royalty wants people to know that there is a place from them. He said the exhibition is about community and he wants people to feel a sense of belonging, not just in his art, but in art galleries.
He acknowledges that for a lot of people, it will be their first time in an art gallery and those people might not have ever felt like it was a space they could or should be in. He wants them to see themselves in the art, whether it is happiness or sadness.
“Knowing you’re not alone in going through these things is super important to me, because that is an emotion that I struggled with a lot,” he said.
A lot of FadingRoyalty’s pieces start as journaling. He takes notes written in his mobile phone and works backwards from his notes to see if the idea is visually striking. When something is striking, he sketches it and he does color studies and sketches until he is satisfied with how things look, then he paints it on canvas.
For more information about FadingRoyalty, visit www.fadingroyalty.com. For more information about Connect Gallery, visit www.connectgallery.com.
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