LONDON.- Eminent London artist Antony Micallef graces The Outsiders London gallery this spring with a special exhibition of his acclaimed ‘Head’ portraits, opening 9 March 2012.

Following the runaway success of 2011’s sold-out show Happy Deep Inside My Heart at Lazarides Rathbone Gallery, A Little Piece of Me features ten new examples of Antony’s ongoing Head series. Each are titled A Little Piece of Me numbered one to ten.

Whilst the heads almost all resemble Antony himself, it’s not his intention to create self-portraits. Instead, they serve to capture a certain sentiment – or vehemence. “These Heads are simply about looking,” says Antony. “It’s me, alone, with just a mirror. But the intention isn’t to make a self-portrait. Instead, it’s to capture an emotion. I look at my own head as simply a method to help find these faces from within the paper, to purge them out. I feel it’s important to paint from life while I’m creating these Heads, as it’s the only way to capture a visceral, fleeting glimpse that can be impossible to obtain from a photograph.”

Antony’s relationship with the Head paintings is spontaneous, physical and intimate: “The end result is never known before I begin. The mark making creates the expression of the face, changing it with each stroke. I’m constantly picking up the canvas, turning it around, trying to control the drips and then throwing it down. This is a very different process from doing some of the other larger, more considered pieces that I create.”

Whilst they are not as ambitious in scale as Antony’s major works the Head paintings are highly admired, both by Antony’s fans and those viewing his art for the first time. “When someone buys one of my Head paintings, it’s the biggest compliment of all,” he says. “They don’t contain any of the distractions that my larger paintings contain. If somebody buys one, it’s not about the colour of the picture matching their designer apartment, and they’re not buying it according to the message, trend or latest fashion either. They’re buying it purely for the painting, for the marks I’ve made on the canvas.”