Thomasin Dewhurst

work in progress 2

2011-10-20T18:26:00.000-07:00

Third Prize in UK portrait competition

2011-09-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

I won third place in a UK portrait competition: Portrait Competition 2011

"Two Figures" drawing mentioned in ExpressCincinnati.com

2011-08-31T15:39:00.000-07:00

Work to be published in the Manifest international painting annual 2 exhibition-in-print

2011-08-31T07:17:00.000-07:00

My work in oils is to be included in the upcoming publication from the Manifest Gallery: International Painting Annual 2 exhibition-in-print.

http://www.manifestgallery.com/inpa/inpa2/index.html

My drawing work was also recently included in the upcoming publication: International Drawing Annual 6 exhibition-in-print.

http://www.manifestgallery.org/nda/inda6/

Manifests publications are well known and have recently won a prestigious award (http://www.independentpublisher.com/article.php?page=1442). They are available to purchase the Manifest Gallery's online bookstore: http://www.manifestgallery.org/manifestpress/index.html and on amazon.com.

Work in Progress

2011-07-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

Charcoal and pastel on paper, 30" x 22"

This second donated print also sold well for American Brittany Rescue!

2011-06-14T08:55:00.000-07:00

This second limited edition print from a watercolour painting of a Brittany Spaniel aslo sold well for the American Brittany Rescue organisation.

http://www.americanbrittanyrescue.org/

Print sold for funds for American Brittany Rescue Charity

2011-06-14T08:49:00.000-07:00

I just found out that my Brittany Spaniel limited edition print which I donated to the American Brittany Rescue Charity sold well for them. Very pleased!

http://www.americanbrittanyrescue.org/

Torso With Arms Raised

2011-06-12T08:18:00.000-07:00

Charcoal and Pastel on paper, 28" x 22", June 2011

A drawing to be exhibited at First Street Gallery, New York

2011-06-11T08:19:00.000-07:00

link: 2011 National Juried Exhibition; June 22 - July 16, 2011

Torso II

2011-04-17T10:54:00.000-07:00

Charcoal on paper, 26" x 21"

Two Figures

2011-03-01T12:45:00.000-08:00

Charcoal and white pastel on paper, 22" x 30"

Video article on "The Figure Now 2011" at the Fontbonne Fine Arts Gallery

2011-02-28T07:28:00.000-08:00

The Figure Now | Exhibition 2011

by Dickson Hugh Beall
An interview with the curator, Michael Grimaldi:
http://vimeo.com/19785131

Female Figure From Behind (Study)

2011-02-25T07:56:00.000-08:00

Charcoal and white pastel on paper, 20" x 28"

2011-02-20T09:14:00.000-08:00

INDA 6 at Manifest Gallery

Selected for inclusion in the the INDA 6 International Drawing Annual publication from the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio:

http://artdeadline.com/artman2/publish/artnews/Drawing6.shtml

2011-02-14T07:28:00.000-08:00

Nice article from my alma Mater

Expression in the depiction of tactility

Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa

14th February 2011 By: Zamuxolo Matiwana

Rhodes University alumni around the world continually excel in their chosen fields. Thomasin Dewhurst is no exception; a respected artist who moved to the USA in 2000. She has been invited to exhibit her work in a solo exhibition entitled The Emergent Body: Paintings and Drawings at the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The exhibition ran in January and tied in with the Manifest Gallery's exploration of the human figure, including the nude in contemporary art. See complete article here ...

Upcoming Event

2011-01-10T09:22:00.000-08:00

THE EMERGENT BODY
Paintings and Drawings
by Thomasin Dewhurst

January 21 - February 18, 2011

Solo exhibit of paintings and drawings by Thomasin Dewhurst. The exhibit continues Manifest's exploration of the human figure, including the nude in contemporary art. It also provides a snapshot view into the near-side of the lineage of painting by women. Dewhurst's works are inevitably current, but also share a bond in time to those of Gentileschi, Cassatt, Morisot, Kollwitz, Nourse, Saville, and others.

http://www.manifestgallery.org/ ;

Www.thomasindewhurst.com

Torso

2010-12-23T18:22:00.000-08:00

Charcoal on paper, 22" x 30"

Drawing 3

2010-11-06T08:23:00.000-07:00

Charcoal on paper, 22" x 30"

Drawing 2

2010-10-25T11:58:00.000-07:00

Charcoal on paper, 22" x 30"

Sleep

2010-05-30T09:31:00.000-07:00

Watercolour on paper, 2010

Figure in Water ll

2010-02-26T09:36:00.000-08:00

Oil on canvas, 22" x 38", 2010

Woman Wading

2010-01-31T11:33:00.000-08:00

Oil on canvas, 32" x 39", 2010

2010-01-17T09:35:00.001-08:00

One of my paintings has been accepted into "The Figure Now" exhibition at the Fontbonne University's Fine Art Gallery. The painting will be on exhibition there in February 2010.

Remembrance / Inheritance: English Boy in Shallow Water

2010-01-12T15:24:00.000-08:00

Watercolour and pencil on paper, 10" x 15", 2010

Remembrance / Inheritance 1: York Minster

2010-01-07T09:59:00.000-08:00

Watercolour and pencil on paper, 14" x 10"

2009-11-26T08:47:00.000-08:00

Doing the watercolour forces me to look at what is actually happening on the paper. The marks turn out so differently from the expected and actually get a real sense of solidity quickly (paradoxically to the thinness of the water paint), so things actually happen quickly and change often, making me thing of the idea behind the painting more and how it changes with the changing marks on the paper.

With the oil, doing it afterwards, I lost some of the tendency to build up the paint thickly to get a sense of solid flesh - there's a lot more rubbing the paint into the canvas to make a sort of opaque glaze for the mid shadows, and I used a lot more linseed oil in the dark shadow areas. Only the really highlighted areas were scumbled on more thickly. I also used more lines to help define the edges and contours, so as to leave the paint in a more suggestive form - which is really satisfying to me - and not to have to overwork it to make it appear real.

I have been looking at Rembrandt (for ages I haven't like his work at all, but suddenly came round to it again), and it seems like he did an illusion of an illusion - i.e. using quite thin, short-worked paint in such a way as to give an illusion of thick paint recreating solid flesh. Some of his paintings seem to have been such arduous jobs, but I think they are in fact quite simple, with lots of of small suggestive lines, and intelligent compositions as to just seem arduous, but actually quickly achieved. With the work enjoyably in the idea behind the painting and not with the pursuit of technical success.

Figure and Backdrop

2009-11-11T07:47:00.000-08:00

Oil on canvas, 2007. 30" x 40", SOLD

South African Woman

2009-11-08T07:38:00.001-08:00

Oil on canvas, 2007, 30" x 40"

Figure Dreaming

2009-09-24T09:31:00.000-07:00

Charcoal and conte on paper, 2008, 25" x 32" SOLD

Shadow Dance

2009-08-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

Oil on canvas, 2009, 24" x 30"

Woman Inhaling

2009-04-30T19:00:00.001-07:00

Oil on canvas, 2009, 21" x 22"

Portrait of an Imaginary Person

2009-04-06T07:43:00.001-07:00

Oil on canvas, 2009, 18" x 22"

Figure in Water

2009-03-08T10:43:00.001-07:00

Oil on canvas, 2009, 20" x 32"

Tonal Study, oil on canvas, 2007

2008-01-01T08:23:00.001-08:00

Oil on canvas, 2007, 20" x 24" nfs

Four Trees

2007-09-30T09:00:00.000-07:00

Conte on paper

Three Trees in the Wind

2007-09-13T09:18:00.000-07:00

Conte pencil on paper

Finalist in the 24th Annual Artist's Magazine Competition

2007-07-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

My painting "Untitled" (oil on canvas, 24" x 20", 2007) was selected as a finalist in the 24th Annual Artist's Magazine Competition in the Experimental category.

These are a selection of new sketches.

2007-07-27T09:09:00.001-07:00

Notes

2007-07-27T08:56:00.001-07:00

Sunday, October 29th, 2006

At present I am reading some earlyish American novelists: Cather, Capote, Hawthorne and I greatly moved by some of the characters and especially by their pioneering status within the environment of the hot American prairies.

I painted an earlier work based on a Woolf character called "Self-portrait as Shelmerdine". I am fascinated by the surreal both intentional and not, and find it in a lot of Degas' works, and also Balthus, Hopper - more influences, although not literary of course. Capote's early work is so wonderfully strange - Other Voices, Other Rooms, for example- and together with the slightly mesmerising quality of mid-summer in certain US states it makes for highly powerful imagery.

Monday, October 30th, 2006

I am trying to achieve the seriousness of expression you would find in a Capote or Cather novel in my work. I use myself a lot as a model because photographs are so static for me. When I paint myself, each time I look I am in a slightly different pose and this helps to create a movement and life. Also, you can completely change your mind and find what it really is that inspires you. Sometimes things just seem so tedious and not worth the effort when I paint and by moving around I am finding that I need more of a sense of solidity and form and, at the moment, a light and dark contrast - I am discovering I love to work with the reflected light in the shadow; to create interesting paint and purer color as well as achieving a sense of visual reality.

Saturday, November 4th, 2006

I almost always paint from life, although I on occasions forced to use photos. I think working from film stills might be more interesting, as there's a sense of movement there, and you can play more of the film and get a truer sense of physiognomy and character.

Thursday, March 8th, 2007

I have always been influenced by music, and not always classical, in my painting. I have also been influenced by literature and theatre too. I am very often inspired to express the idea of music in my work but it has been difficult to discover a way of doing that satisfactorarily. I did attempt to do a work on the theme of Grieg's Peer Gynt suite. I had just read Ibsen's play (which actually moved me more than the Grieg music, but you can't read and paint can you?). At the moment I have been thinking a lot about Gilbert and Sullivan's Mikado as it is currently being performed where we live. I am most moved to paint something on Yum Yum's song "The Sun and I".

So far, though, my attempts to express these ideas fall very much below the height and intensity of my emotional response to the music. I am trying to get my work more equal to the abstract qualities of musical notes - to get colours, shapes, and contrasts such as vigour and tenderness in the brushstrokes to fore so that I can move away from illustration to a more musical feeling. I do often feel when I am painting well that it is akin to singing.

I have been influenced by the composer Satie very much, and, early on, by the Beatles, and also the Paddington Bear theme and the Wombles (British children's programmes from the 70's), so it all depends on where I am mentally and emotionally (how nostalgic I am feeling or how much I feel I can face the brave new world!).

On a side note, I am, at present, influenced by the books I am reading. Willa Cather's novels brought a bright, yellow sunlight into my paintings, while Faulkner's "Hamlet" turned my paintings more towards a green grey light and shadow. This was an unintended development. I wasn't trying to paint what I read at all. My mood changed naturally by reading these different writers, and the resulting expression was unforced and unexpected and because of this, it made a powerful and convincing feeling in my work.

I don't paint while listening to music, although I have very much done so in the past, listening to radio stations that play classical music so that I don't have to break through my concentration and reverie to turn over or change cd's. I found the interruption of the adverts very irritating, though. And even the music itself became irritating because it often would not coincide with my particular mood - i.e the station would often be garishly dramatic when I was trying to paint something delicate and difficult, which made me too angry without being able to use that anger productively.

The memory of music (and of plays and books) is most important to me because it is with that that the aspects of things that I have assimilated come out in an honest metamorphosis of the original theme.

On a last note, my musical appreciation and ability to play the piano certainly improved when my painting began to mature. I had a much deeper understanding of music when I began to understand what it was to paint like an adult - with larger ideas more encompassing of a universal humanity; or when I began to get to know myself as a human being living alongside other human beings.

Monday, March 12, 2007

I did my Master's thesis on the topic of tactility in contemporary figurative / portrait painting. I focussed on the loss of boundaries between the artist and the painted object and, subsequently, between the viewer and the resulting painting.

I was fascinated by the question of what makes or made a figure painting great. i.e a real sense of flesh, touchable and human. This idea was spurred by the sparsity of luscious contemporary figurative painting like the paintings of Courbet, for example, and by the lack of interest (it seemed) in painting in general.

My idea of loss of boundaries is, I think, similar to your idea of an abyss. It's a loss of self-consciousness, of agitation, over-passionateness, when you become physically tired and your body's excess energy and excitement don't interfere. In the beginning or when your painting gets stuck, I find it's very helpful to be angry or passionate because it warms you up, if you will, wrenches you out of your complacency or out of your old and exhausted ideas to new ones, or to a place where your subconscious is not hindered in it's expression. But it is at the time when you become dreamy, doodley, or quiet that things really start to happen. You forget what you have in mind to achieve, and just paint. It's at these times that the painting breaks through to a new level, and you stand back and are amazed at what has happened and are at a loss to say how it came about.

With my own work I generally have to have everything very quiet and be alone to have this happen (that's why I paint so many self-portraits). And as I grow more confident I can take longer breaks between paintings and between painting sessions. The less confident I am the longer I worry over a work. These breakthroughs, for me, are generally short lived, but when they happen I achieve more in a 2 hour period than a week of constant fussing.

So I think these periods in the "abyss" don't need to be lengthened, or forced. They happen naturally and at the length your mind needs. It's really a matter of allowing them to happen. Your own mind, your subconscious, is really the foremost painting guide you should have.

Michael Fried, and American art critic and historian, wrote a lot about Courbet and the idea of absorbtion of the viewer in front of Courbet's paintings. It's about bringing the viewer into the same boundaryless state the artist was when painting the work.

Here's a link to him on Wikipedia with a bibliography. Fried has some very exciting ideas, and he is well worth reading.

Sunday, June 3, 2007

With painting the skin, I don't often use glazes because I don't really have the patience, but I do have a number of layers of paint from all the workings-out I do before I am finally satisfied. So that creates a kind of depth which is sometimes like polished precious stone i.e it looks as if you are seeing the colours and lines under a glass-like surface. You see the ghosts of earlier painted, partially destroyed, figures and that brings a mystery to the work, as if it were telling its own story and dictating my actions. I love it when I achieve that because I feel I am much freer from my clumsy self-conscious ideas - as though the painting itself has taken over the responsibility of its existence.

Orator, oil on Canvas, 30" x 24", 2007

2007-07-27T08:35:00.000-07:00

This painting was inspired by the effects of the scrapings-off that happened during it's initial progress. The effect of the light having more presence that the form and solidity of the figure was exciting, and it suggested a kind of heat-haze or glare from footlights on the theatrical stage. I am very often drawn to the idea of the dramatic arts with the flamboyant characters and narratives, the dramatic lighting and the freedom to portray exaggerated poses and costumes with the risk of affectedness.