/ artist's statement
Painting can be a peculiar, what, occupation? Calling? Enterprise? Racket? Painting involves a lot of looking. Sitting and looking. Or standing, or perching. Looking at everything that might become paintings, and then once it does, looking at the paintings. It's a lot of time spent trying to make things look right while trying to figure out what exactly that means. It's like making a map of somewhere I've never been. It's like a story with many beginnings, many middles, and no end. Sometimes, going to the studio feels like going to the office. Sometimes it feels like going to the dentist. Sometimes it feels like going to the playground. Sometimes it doesn't work.
In my studio, there are rules and boundaries and ritualised behaviour and repetition.
My paintings and drawings are about painting and drawing. And being alive and watching television and the world outside colliding with the world inside; the sky; computer screens; architecture; plants; an article in a magazine about 5000 computers embedded in a square kilometre of ice, all looking for tiny subatomic particles. Particles so small and shy they pass through Earth without hitting anything.
They are about the difference between thinking about nothing and not thinking at all.
/ bio
I was born some time ago, I'm pretty sure of that. As a child, I drew constantly, and resented leaving Southern California, where it was always sunny and the Pacific Ocean was just over there, to live in Seattle, where it was always rainy, and Puget Sound without a wetsuit was cold enough to kill you in ten minutes. I always meant to return to the sun, but somehow, I ended up in Plymouth. It's working out rather well. I'm left-handed. I don't wear shoes while painting, and I have superstitions about my work routine. I would like to be able to paint songs.
/ contact
click any image to enlarge
Matthew Thomas