Sydney Contemporary 2022: Nanda\Hobbs Booth

On the surface of a Tony Mighell painting, it is clear he is charting a passage—from raw gestural beginnings to works of distilled, deliberate surfaces. Each begins with the immediacy of a physical mark and continues to evolve, not through accumulation but a process of deliberate reduction and reworking. He slowly and methodically retreats into the surface, refining the tension between intuitive expression and considered construction. It is an exercise in control and constraint—a quiet reckoning between gesture and refinement. 

This new body of work has shifted away from the kind of process we’ve come to expect from Mighell. Instead of building depth through mark upon mark, these paintings sit flat and dense, asserting their presence through surface. The material process plays a central role here: oil paint is laid down and then gently stripped back using newspaper, partially drawing out the oil. This act quiets the mark, absorbing some of its heat, and sets the tone for what follows. 

Mighell then works back into the surface. The early marks of each painting are never erased, but they’re not foregrounded either. The layering—sometimes thirty coats deep—is thin and deliberate, allowing the painting to hold onto its history without becoming overwhelmed by it. Each decision is felt, but also measured. The use of white is a recurring force, restraining the marks beneath and above through an act of negotiation.

There is a compelling tension in this practice: a push and pull between intuition and clarity, between spontaneity and consideration. There is no overt depth, no theatricality of space. Instead, what emerges are paintings that appear taut, as if stretched across an unseen frame—like the skin of a drum. Mighell arrives at a kind of visual equilibrium where the surface has knit together, charged with the memory of its making. Gestures are quietened and marks are pulled tight, pointing not to representation but to presence. Mighell resists traditional painterly depth in favour of compressing and weaving back into the surface.