Bio

For more than thirty years, Thomas Lawson (b. 1951 Glasgow, Scotland) has been using anonymous sources and overlooked images and references as a starting point to investigate the possibilities of painting as a form of translation, an act of transformation. The resistance of material, the optical tension of color and form, and the refusal of easy interpretation all speak to the enduring capacity of painting to surprise and delight. Employing the traditional elements of painting to pose questions about art, life, and the relationship between the two, Lawson intentionally blocks the recognizable gestures that hint at narrative possibilities, pressing his imagery to the point of abstraction. Vibrating patterns and jarring colors disrupt spatial conventions to create a visual disturbance, and life-size figures based on art school life studies and mass-media sources are truncated or segmented by abrupt changes in scale, color, and texture. The juxtapositions and unexpected rhyming of crouched figures and masked faces, dismembered limbs and mysterious shadows, disrupt logical interpretation, unleashing something more expansive and poetic. A disorienting realm of the imagination is revealed.