Richard Thomas
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March 26th to June 3rd
Opening Reception
Sunday, April 7, 2002 from 3 to 5 PM.
Artist Statment
In my current body of work I continue to explore two themes that have characterized my imagery for the past two years. One is the visual dynamics of urban life; the other, paradox of place. The worlds I depict have buildings as the main inhabitants - structures that at times take on human expression, animated by bright, saturated color (and sometimes stark monochromatic interpretations) and tilted, exaggerated perspectives.
The simplified graphic treatment of my work, emphasized through the use of a limited pallet and minimal forms and shapes, is intentional. I pile images on top of one another in impossible juxtapositions, translating the horizontal experience of passing along a city street into a vertical ascent, or descent, up and down the confines of the painting. Streets become rivers, blurs of color and pattern pulsing through mazes of high rises. Buildings sway at improbable angles as if pulled by an unknown gravitationsl force. People are absent, overshadowed by the concrete and brick canyons of the urban environment.
My compositions are fictional and other-worldly but have as their foundation the reality of the chaotic world in which we live. The unnatural juxtapositions in some of my works (paradoxes of place) is at times a visual metaphor for city life longing for a more peaceful existence.
Artist Biography
Richard Thomas' paintings, drawings, sculptures and designs have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in galleries and public spaces in the United States over a thirty-year career. These include shows at the Alva Gallery, New London, Connecticut, the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art at the University of Connecticut's Avery Point campus, the Paul Mellon Arts Center at Choate Rosemary Hall in Wallingford, Ct, the Oklahoma City Art Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and the State University of New York at New Paltz, New York.
Mr. Thomas is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, most recently winning Best of Show award at the Current Choices Exhibition in Guilford, Ct. He has also received awards for sculpture and design from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Industrial Designers Society of America, Print Magazine and Signs of the Times Magazine, the latter for a sculptural collaboration with Isamu Noguchi.
Richard Thomas was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1948. He received an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a BFA from Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, Maine. He has studied with Jacob Lawrence, James Weeks, Al Blaustein, Red Grooms, Richard Anuskiewicz, Ezio Martinelli, Mac Wells. Lee DuSell, Robert Goodnough and others.
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