With Table for One, I wanted to create a painting that feels both intimate and slightly unsettling. Set within a vivid fluorescent pink space beneath a dark blue sky, it holds a quiet tension between stillness and movement, presence and absence.

The seated figure appears partially absent, with no visible hands or feet, as if slipping in and out of the scene. The table also feels uncertain. With no cutlery laid out and its stance slightly animated, it almost seems to move towards her rather than simply wait. I wanted that ambiguity to remain in the painting, as though something familiar had shifted into a more psychological space.

This painting explores solitude, distance, and the strange emotional charge that can gather around ordinary things.

Anthony Carey

Table For One

In this work, two small figures stand beneath a vivid pink moon, held within a stark, pared-back landscape of fluorescent pink and deep blue-black. The scene is simple, but the feeling is less certain. It sits somewhere between closeness and distance, companionship and isolation.

I wanted the painting to remain open, almost like a remembered fragment. It suggests encounter, but without explanation. What matters most is the atmosphere of quiet, suspended, and slightly uncanny.

Part of the Silent Suppers series, this painting reflects on presence, distance, and the emotional charge of shared silence.

Silent Suppers 1

This painting brings the figure closer. Set against a fluorescent pink ground and dark upper field, the body feels both present and withdrawn, as if held in a moment of reflection or quiet endurance. The composition is simple, but the surface carries a sense of tension beneath the stillness.

I was interested in how colour and scale could heighten feeling without needing much narrative. The work sits somewhere between portrait, presence, and memory.

Part of the Silent Suppers series, it explores solitude, interiority, and the fragile space between exposure and retreat.

Silent Suppers 3

This small painting holds a quiet kind of tension. A lone figure stands against a field of fluorescent pink and deep blue-black, as if caught between presence and distance. The space feels spare, almost theatrical, but inward, more like an emotional landscape than a literal one.

I was interested in how little was needed to suggest solitude, waiting, and a kind of suspended time. The figure is there, but only just, fragile against the intensity of the colour around it.

Part of the Silent Suppers series, this work explores stillness, separation, and the strange intimacy of empty space.

Silent Suppers 2

Acrylic and plaster on canvas
20 x 20cm (8 x 8in)

Comes framed in black wooden float frame, ready to hang
Framed size 22 x 22cm (8.7 x 8.7in)

Silent suppers 4

In Bridging Times Divide, I wanted to hold two figures in the same space without fully bringing them together. Set within a vivid fluorescent pink field beneath a dark blue sky, the painting carries a sense of connection, but also pause, distance, and unresolved feeling.

What interests me here is the tension between nearness and absence and how people can remain connected across time, memory, or emotional distance without fully meeting. The moon above them adds to that atmosphere, giving the work a quiet, dreamlike pull.

This painting is about longing, separation, and the fragile space between presence and distance.

Bridging Times Divide

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Guardians and Dreamers

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Faith, Hope and Charity (Daughters of Santa Sophia)

Backyard

Anthony Carey

collection: Quiet Distances

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