• Work
    • 2017 SUSPENDED GESTURES
    • 2017 WILD THINGS
    • 2016 THE CHASE
    • 2015 AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
    • 2014 BREATHING THINGS
    • 2012-18 LINES
    • CURRENTLY
  • About
    • BIO
    • CV
  • NEWS
  • COLLABORATION
  • CONTACT

Taylor O. Thomas

  • Work
    • 2017 SUSPENDED GESTURES
    • 2017 WILD THINGS
    • 2016 THE CHASE
    • 2015 AUTOBIOGRAPHIES
    • 2014 BREATHING THINGS
    • 2012-18 LINES
    • CURRENTLY
  • About
    • BIO
    • CV
  • NEWS
  • COLLABORATION
  • CONTACT

Video documentation of My Baggage, How I Hold It in process, San Francisco, CA, August 2015

 
Mercy Over Rules
My Baggage, How I Hold It
My Baggage
My Baggage (detail)
How I Hold It
How I Hold It (detail)
How I Hold It (detail 2)
Light and Heavy
Incarnate
Incarnate (detail)
Surrender Flag (The Resurrection)
Installation of Autobiographies
That Which Is Not Seen
Tug
Autobiographies
(Not for Sale) Today (Selah) Tomorrow
Suffering Stand
Purpose Re-Collection
Transfiguration
(Not for sale) Craving and Keeping
(Sold) Dear Noah
Jonah
Tanford Rules
Torn, I
Torn, II
Torn, I & II (installation view)
A Mending Process
(Sold) White Washing
The Secret of Before and After
(Sold) Give and Go
(Sold) Snow Shield
Playing Telephone
Self Education Wall
The Corner I Always Cut
Tuck and Hover
Piece Me, I & II
Portrait of a Working Woman
Perfect Guideline
Self Scape, I
Self Scape, II (I Am Here)
Self Scape, III
Self Scape, IV (Sky with Many Strings)
(Sold) Once Upon This Time
(Sold) Listin'
My Bottom Line
Urgencies
Twine and Trinity, I
Twine and Trinity, II
Twine and Trinity, III
Twine and Trinity (installation view)
Measuring the Mountains
Ages and Caves
Turbulence
Installation of Landscapes
 

Autobiographies

I simulated satisfaction:
weighting my feet to avoid unknowns, freezing my tracks to note the progress, eliminating risk to keep comfortable

until—I found, and was found painting: the unkempt process
that allows the mystery of “what next?” to captivate, more than rattle

With tubs of paint and pastels, rulers and tape, elastic cords and deflated tires, I coax personal experiences into form. After first sprawling words (sometimes full sentences, other times lists) across my notebook, I enter the process of translating those issues to a larger surface. The painting assemblages that result allude to conceptual paradoxes that I question daily, specifically those relating to faith, control, and self-actualization. I intertwine the action of reaching for answers with the condition of sagging beneath human imperfection and inability. Underlying all of my artwork is a search for spiritual, mental, and physical freedom amidst an acknowledgment of my own limitation and tactility.

This mark-made, self-formation is ironically paired with self-renunciation upon my works’ material completion. Though my artistic practice remains an extension of personal story, I contextualize my abstractions as vehicles for engagement, stepping beyond my own narrative. With the notion that every individual has a truth worth sharing, I pose art as an invitation, rather than an isolated entity.  My aim is not that I would nail solidified statements to the wall, but that I would give glimpses into concepts, questions, and forces that viewers can consider long after the physical work.

my image remains
open, a sentence without a period

-TOT, August 2015