Tony Fomison: Life of the Artist

This account of Tony Fomison, the first full one to be published, is both timely and balanced. Fomison died thirty-four years ago after an intense and conflicted life as person and artist, whose art took on some of the dark and difficult ghosts in our history. Mark Forman has laid out the detail of that life in a well-researched account, without passing judgement on its flaws or exaggerating its virtues. This has resulted in a valuable record of a gifted artist who worked through an important phase in our growing as a culture.

I had been convinced that someone who had not known Tony personally, who was not party to the secret painting cultures of that time, was not the right person to write Tony’s life. I was quite wrong . . . Mark Forman’s understanding of Tony’s painting is profound and insightful, and his research is remarkable, as he recovers the memories of the survivors of the art scenes that Tony was part of with intelligence and sensitivity. You get a window that opens onto an Aotearoa rarely glimpsed. Yes, the interviews are telling, but Mark keeps his focus on Tony’s paintings: Tony’s pursuit of the exact technique to express his passionate hunger for transcendence through seeing. That way Tony could find redemption. Best image? Shirley Grace’s ‘Tony at Williamson Ave’. Brilliant. The first image, the all-too-human Tony, magicking himself into a best-version Tony, the role he so aspires to, the Tagaloa of the visually inspired.

There is a real need for this book both in terms of a general assessment of Fomison’s significance as an artist, the shape of his evolution through three decades of his practice, his place in New Zealand art history, his relationship to his predecessors and contemporaries and the need to sift myth from fact in terms of his biography and career. Mark Forman has consulted almost everyone who can speak with any authority about Fomison’s life and career, and he has diligently searched the written record. Although not a trained art historian, he has brought an intelligent and empathetic perspective to Fomison’s life and art and has offered a convincingly well-rounded account of the man and his work.

Through the darkness and the light, delve into thestory of one of New Zealand’s most influential twentieth-century artists.

• | Author: Mark Forman
• | Publisher: Auckland University Press
• | Publication Date: Mar 13, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Hardback
• | ISBN-13: 9781776711277
• | ISBN-10: 1776711270