Unlikely Portraits, Seasonal Strands: Recent Paintings by Joseph Thomas
September 23 - December 1, 2000
What do weather and portraiture share in common? Joseph Thomas explores the question in this exhibition of 17 paintings completed while he served as visiting assistant professor in SCU's Art and Art History Department, 1998-2000. Thomas sees weather as a metaphor for portraiture, wherein the minute changes in climate, like moods, are best understood over time and by comparison to other variations.
To
the viewer, Thomas' large, gestural canvases may resemble abstract expressionism,
however his process differs significantly from that employed by the expressionists.
An interest in the combination of topography and the changing nature of
weather informs his artistic practice. Each time that Thomas flies in
an airplane, he brings a camera and takes photographs of the patterns
of clouds that he observes, as well as the rolling hills and valleys of
the California landscape. After the film is developed, he begins work
in his studio, by creating a series of drawings onto which he collages
bits of photographs and other items. These preparatory drawings are incorporated
into the paintings that he begins as the next step. The drawings serve
as designs for the strands or forms that float across the more subtle
background of the paintings. For example, in the painting titled The
Seasons: Four (1999), the ground is painted in watery hues of green
and blue, while the strands on the surface are distinguished by their
dark, twisted forms. The paintings themselves usually cover enormous canvases-for
example, the largest in the exhibition, Pietà (1999), measures
15 by eight feet.
At this stage, Thomas is merely half way through the process. He continues by photographing each stage of the painting, scanning the photographic prints, then using a computer program such as Photoshop to manipulate the images. He experiments with various angles and layouts, later printing out several of these versions, which he then takes back into the studio. He then completes the painting using the printouts as guidance; they influence the finished painting, but the resemblance is only slight. Thomas refers to the finished product as an "informed mystery."
Thomas' work is distinctive for its links with both modernism, in the energetic, gestural surface quality of his paintings; and the postmodern, in the cerebral lack of immediacy in his process. His series of paintings-whether based on temporal changes in weather, like The Seasons, or based on a living organism, such as The Blue Celeste-unfold like frames in a movie. Because he sees the unfolding of a personality-or of a climate-as something best understood in sequence, he sites the work of Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-), the avant-garde Italian filmmaker, as a greater influence than any painter. Both the climate and an individual's personality are revealed gradually over time, according to the artist, and it is these truths that he strives to reveal metaphorically through his work.
The de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, 500 El Camino Real, Santa Clara, CA 95053
© 2005 de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University - contact rnadel@scu.edu - phone: 408-554-4528