About

b. 1998

My name is Anthony Bartley, aka FadingRoyalty, a Chicago-based visual artist and founder of HAPPY Days Apparel.

For most of my childhood I dreamed of being a scientist, but after a mental health crisis during my freshman year of college I discovered art as an effective form of therapy. From there I began to incorporate art deeper and deeper into my life. Art became my therapy and a communication tool for me to express emotions that were difficult to express otherwise. I would come to realize that while my art was deeply personal, it was also something that others could see themselves in and connect with. As such, I’m now on a mission to use my art as a platform for mental health awareness and therapy for myself and others. No one should be made to feel these emotions alone.

My work ranges from portraiture and collage exploring the Black community’s relationship with popular media (manga, anime, comic books) to colorful illustrative paintings of characters experiencing varying degrees of saddening situations.

FadingRoyalty serves as a home for majority of my creative endeavors from painting to 3D design, and the name comes from a personal revelation about legacy and how the passage of time eventually leads everything to fade: even royalty.

HAPPY Days Apparel is a brand I created as an additional creative outlet for fashion design. The creation of the brand followed my graduation from the Fashion For All Foundation’s 2023 Ann Lowe Summer Fellowship where I learned how to sew for the first time.