Anthony Pyke
Artist

An English Palmeresque Romantic with reminders in his work of early Sutherland and Piper, the landscape forms have been condensed in to a highly complicated abstracted structures - typical marriage of figuration and abstraction. The result is highly personal and original; one hears the individual voice. These paintings show invention and curiosity controlled by a classical feeling for balance. Their poetry is conditioned by a tough, non sentimental quality in the colour and paint. Two canvasses show Pyke at his most mystical; "November Landscape" a large hierarchical composition in sombre colours and "Season of Mists", more lyrical and heightened.

Art Review

Pyke seems to live behind closed doors. His sombre paintings hit you straight on, unyielding in their contemplative search for beauty in screens that shut out casual pleasure. They are works of considered subtlety, astringent sensuality, capable of adding up to and impressive weight, a conflict between their hard-edged rectangularity and passages of emotive painting.

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Hastings Independant Press

https://www.hastingsindependentpress.co.uk/tag/anthony-pyke/
Pyke is disciplined. Hard and angular patterns and restrained but beautifully harmonised patches of colour make him an artist who deserves careful study. His method is strictly abstract but the inspiration comes, in each case, from the landscape closely observed and fully understood. It is not difficult to guess, even without help from his titles, that the moods of nature are his starting points and "Autumn Light" Maturing Sun" Mellow Fruitfulness" are not merely words invented to fill the catalogue.

Eric Newton. The Guardian


Pyke arrives at an equivalence between flat design and the sense of space which produces distinguished results, notably being his "Mustard Fields" and paintings in which a gleam of light shines through the dark surround, his "Autumn Light" being a good example.

The Times

© Anthony Pyke