UNDERSTANDING PAINTing MEDIA

I was interested in this artist primarily because her work is unusual. The application of the paint and the visible sweeps and swirls of brushstrokes are energetic and playful.

Her backgrounds are pretty, blended and sometimes vivid in their colour hues. Her brushwork is confident and translucent. She creates an eerie and off-planet feel to her studies and I like them very much, all of them.

​

When I read more deeply into her practice and career, I empathised with Thompson’s moving around the world and the ‘in between’ feelings because I had also expressed this about my home environment and being 'in limbo'.

​

I read a couple of online articles (at Widewalls & Art first) about Thompson and her work;

​

 'Thompson was born in Tokyo to a Chilean mother and American father and has been living in Sudan before settling down in the UK. Moving around like this left a feeling of multiplex identities and no limited cultural–geographical attachments, but as well, a certain longing for authenticity or origin. This uprootedness is one of the main subjects of her paintings and can be traced in numerous ways. Her paintings of rocks, weeds, human and animal forms amongst abstract paint marks and lines show leaps from fantastic to the known. Both representational and process-based these oil canvases manage to capture all the subtle differences of the in-between-state they depict on.

The estranging effect comes from the visibility of the dominant brushstroke on her characteristic luminous white, pale grey-green or lilac-pink backgrounds. Exploring the way the ordinary becomes fantastic; Thompson inherits this fundamental dichotomy to her process of painting – showing how images levitate between the edge of growth and exaggeratedly visible brushstrokes.' 

​

 'Thompson’s interest lies in the unconscious mind, dream imagery and symbols–the way the every day becomes fantastic.

Thompson believes the fluid world of her paintings reflects the feeling that matter temporarily takes on certain forms, but that these are transient and capable of shifting and morphing at any moment. This shape-shifting is connected to myths and magical thinking.

That the artist’s subject matter is entirely commonplace reflects on our understanding of the wondrous–and terrible–nature of any being on this planet. Thompson gives weeds, bin-bags, pot plants and woodlands epic status through translation and re-presentation, whilst also expressing ‘interconnectedness’ linking amoebic slime, our smartphones, a dying star….

The artist’s natural world is resolutely urban at source; even a forest is an industri­ally-managed example. This brings together her ideas of ‘nature’ which in her work represents a site of authenticity or a place of origin, longed for, but knowingly unattainable. It is in the area of slippage between the desire for something natural and the actuality that it is inescapably a part of a man-made culture that her subject matter resides, synthesising the everyday and the sublime. Hanging baskets/bonsai trees/uprooted weeds and urban binbags all express a humorous meeting point for the prosaic and the transcendent.

The contained and the uprooted plants have a personal significance for Thompson, who feels no singular cultural–geographical attachment or identity herself, having lived through a trail of transplantations from one country to the next. These cultural leaps enable her to perceive the mundane and to transform it into something alien, estranged, other, sublime or ridiculous.'

​

​

I think Thompson’s magical work is fluid and described as unworldly, and I agree with this description. Thompson is heavily influenced by the work of Max Ernst, who was influenced by Sigmond Freud, and I can see some similarities in The Triumph of Surrealism painting by Ernst because it's colourful playful and full of life. I realise the piece is full of Freudian metaphor but visually it explodes on the canvas, as do many of Thompsons pieces.

​

Thompson uses non-porous supports for her work and then a fluid application of oil paint and mediums to create the flow of her pieces.

Could I recreate them in open acrylics and retarder? When I look closely at her work, I see that the backgrounds are usually one-directional strokes of horizontal or vertical translucent marks that act as base layers. The very well placed and thought about organic over marks look like chaotic, quick markings, but I believe that she has to plan what she intends to do beforehand to achieve these strokes, thinking about the paint and how it moves where the colour will be more intense, for example. She uses various brush widths to produce her markings, some squiggles and some straight, but all with visible strokes.

I contacted Thompson on Instagram and asked how long it took to complete her works. Her reply states that the first layer is relatively quick, after a couple of weeks or months, she revisits the piece. She does go back and make changes after living with the work for a while. Often there are groups of works being started at the same time. Leaving my work for weeks or months to reflect on was not a luxury I had at this stage. Reflecting on work is very beneficial I have discovered and seeing pieces with fresh eyes after weeks is something find assists with critiquing my own personal works.

​

On Thompson's website, I noticed she had ink drawings that seem to be liquid ink sliced through with a tool, a pen or a thin stick to create swirls. Were these studies the early stages and developed into her paintings?

It certainly seems that her organic style of capturing nature has matured over the years, as has her imagination that bursts out from caves, through forests and into her garden. I look forward to making several responses to her work.

​

​

 

 

​

​

​