Tony Fomison was interested in issues of multiculturalism and a constant source of imagery in his work comes from Maori and Pacific subjects. Often his art combined myths or traditional narratives with the human figure. The grainy effect of drawing on the lithographic stone ideally suited Fomison’s unique, often dark, style, with its emphasis on line and shading. Some of the prints are drawn with a minimalist, sketch-like hand and have an almost unfinished feel about them, giving a sense of disintegration, yet there is no doubt he was always in control of the medium. Fomison was born in Christchurch and studied sculpture at the University of Canterbury. Travelling on an Arts Advisory Board grant, he went on to study in England and Europe, where he was influenced by the Old Masters. In 1973 Fomison moved to Auckland where he continued his lifelong interest in Maori and Polynesian cultures.

For the exhibition Painters As Printmakers (19 October 2007 - 20 January 2008) this work appeared with this label:

Tony Fomison was a highly accomplished painter and draughtsman, and it was these skills that he brought to bear in his body of lithographs produced in the mid 1980s. Fomison enjoyed working with lithography, particularly the immediacy of the drawn mark and the grainy texture of the stones on which he drew directly. He often incorporated the darkly evocative, dreamlike subjects found in his paintings into his lithographs, which in turn came to influence his late period paintings. In the late 1980s, not long before his death, he commented that his lithographs had had a direct effect on his painting.

While Fomison had dabbled with lithography in the early 1970s, he never really incorporated the medium into his work until the mid 1980s. Between 1984 and 1986 he worked intensively with Muka Studio, producing over fifty lithographs – a remarkable body of work to emerge over such a short period.