Tony Wild

Tony Wild (b. 1975) is an Australian abstract artist based in Newcastle, NSW, working primarily with oil and cold wax on cradled birch panels. His heavily textured paintings explore decay, erosion, transformation and the physical marks left by time. 

Tony builds his paintings through an intensive process of layering and reduction — adding, scraping, excavating and reconstructing the surface over extended periods. Working between control and letting go, he allows materials and process to influence the direction of each work, often revealing traces of earlier layers beneath the finished surface. 

Drawing inspiration from weathered stone, corroded steel, ageing concrete and deteriorating architecture, Tony is interested in the way seemingly permanent structures are gradually altered by pressure, exposure and time. These physical processes become metaphors for memory, experience and the internal structures we build, carry and eventually see transformed. 

Materiality is central to Tony’s practice. Paint is treated not simply as colour or image, but as a physical substance that can be built, damaged, removed and rebuilt. The resulting surfaces carry the history of their own making — marks, fractures, abrasions and remnants of what existed before. 

Tony holds a Diploma of Fine Art from UNSW and has exhibited his work since 2013. Now working from his studio at Creator Incubator in Newcastle, he is continuing to develop a body of work examining deterioration, transformation and the tension between permanence and inevitable change.