Motte Thomas ~ Fine Artist

Motte Thomas – Artist b:1956 –

My Art imagery has been of many things over the years, so it’s hard to put it into just one particular category. As I have been exposed to the world, grown, transformed and changed with the times, so has my art. The experiences throughout my life, some simple and some profound, have always found a way into my work. I feel that my art has in many aspects been a chronicle of my journey through life. My varied personal interests almost always enter into my works in their own unique and expressive ways. Things like: Nature and Plants; weather patterns; clouds and smoke; the oddity of human ritual; bright colors and dazzling patterns in everything from fabric to nature’s precious fractal expressions; ancient and tribal art; Jazz Music; Books and Stories; TV; Modernism, Dadaism and Abstract Expressionism, to name a few. Even just plain old everyday experiences like hiking across the land, road trips and stopping to smell the roses or just sitting on a rock looking at the water, having a cold beer with a friend…it all seeps into my creative conscience in one visual form or another.

Over the years, I’ve simply allowed my creative direction to take its own course. I’ve never doubted its direction, attempted to control it in any manner much except that it be particularly expressed on canvas or paper more or less. I just go right along with it and I have always been content with its unique freedom of expression, ever curious and entertained by its unpredictable enigmatic results. My art continues to evolve and entertain me with the great joy of discovery each time I’m able to work, all of it becoming vitally important parts of the story of my growth as an artist. Just as I am grateful and appreciate every day of my life and to be able to create, good or bad, in some way it all has value and nothing is ever truly wasted.

Entering into this new decade, my recent works are pulling me towards a new creative direction that is exploding with subconscious spontaneity. It has been a long time coming, but I feel that what is now gushing forth from my hands has been quite the journey to get where I am today. I am overjoyed to be entering into this particular arena for as long as it lasts. My new studio is complete and a larger bull has been let into the pit! I am chasing it, it’s chasing me, dodging each other, spinning about without any hesitation as this raging creative force charges directly towards me. Whoosh! We meet head on with only a thread of air in between us! The close passes create an unpredictable atmosphere that surrounds me in unbridled creative expression. We are splashed upon the canvas together and then take a pause, step back to opposite sides, catch our breath and prepare for another run, ready…aim…go! My imagination, ideas and creative playfulness are constantly creating a random but familiar dance that feels both exciting and terrifying at the same time, to me, so full of life. There is no confusion in the unpredictability of the moment. We are here together in this particular place to carry out this exhilarating game of dodge and chase. I am grateful for every pass of this creative art animal…the passion, the excitement, and the joy we share is constant and never a dull moment.

I am humbled by you taking the time to visit my website. Thank you! I hope that you enjoy having a look at my more than four decades of painting and find various things that may bring some pleasure to your world as it has to mine.

~ Motte Thomas

Review

Out Of The Blue
Art Network Atlanta, Ga

The sticky-shiny colors of Motte Thomas’ encaustics provokes thoughts of the paintings jumping off the canvas and assaulting the viewer. Thomas’ short, overlapping strokes integrate without blending. Each swatch of paint relates to its immediate neighbors, but the individual strokes are easily distinguishable.

With all this apparently effortless integration of strokes, the few areas of smoother brushwork seem almost uneasy. Otherworldly figures, sometimes grotesque abstractions of human and alien forms, seem to play all-too-familiar roles of everyday life that defy their non-human appearance. The viewer witnesses the interaction of the meek, the vicious, the good, the innocent but self serving and the undeserving  wielders of power.

-Aaron Knight (reprinted from ArtWords)