Trish Thompson
Selected Works by Trish Thompson
Selected Press
Selected Publications
Artist Exhibitions
Artist Statement
My intent is to paint from memory. My ambition is to make visible the invisible. I use acrylic paint, oil pastel, graphite, charcoal and gesso in my paintings. Layering, scraping out and collage are techniques to enrich the surface and create interesting textures. I never know what the work will look like in the end. It is painting by discovery.
Trish Thompson's work is a constant discourse between representation and abstraction, and between icon and index. That is, she explores the way image replicates nature while retaining the gesture - in impasto, color and texture- of the artist's hand. Thompson experiments with layers of representation, and is constantly attentive to the dialogue of the process as it unfolds. Although she sometimes works in series, there is a distinct sense of identity to each painting, as each is the unique result of a specific impression, using a slightly different medium, and composed during a different set of circumstances. Thompson's sensuously tactile surfaces urge us to remember we are experiencing a work of art. There are allusions to three-dimensional motif, but the marks, indicative of process, reinforce the object's two-dimensionality.
According to Phoebe Smith, the luminous natural image "seduces the viewer ineluctably to suspend disbelief and experience the painting as reality, felt reality."