Portrait of an imaginary person

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

This is a detail of a new one as the full picture was very pixellated when I reduced it in size. You can view the full image here:

http://thomasindewhurst.blogspot.com/

or here:

web page

Thanks for looking.

[Alexandra Tyng]

Thomasin,

I am in awe as usual. This painting is a true composition of color and light working together. It puts me in mind of a piece of music: there are rich low notes and pale high notes. There are broad adagio passages and areas of short, energetic, staccato strokes. An the colors are like moods produced by the music. One flows into the next.

I keep thinking back to when you first started posting your work here. At that time, the backgrounds and figures, though exciting and well-painted, were so separate, so different from each other. It was like a good tune with a good accompaniment. Now you're painting a symphony!

[Mary Cupp]

Oooooooh! That is so beautiful. I really love the semi-transparency and the liquid shimmering quality of your paint. The expression is haunting as well. I love the way you can keep it loose and yet have such a solid sense of form.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Dear Alex and Mary

Thanks so much for your comments. I am very pleased to hear you respond so well to this painting. I am trying to get out of the frame of mind of finishing a painting i.e just making the ear slightly better or being excited about the way an arm suggests itself accidentally out of some vigorous paint and then painting it neatly to make it able to be seen by others, as well as being accepted for being a finished painting. What I am trying to do is leave the exciting, suggestive paint as the core idea for the painting and then work the rest of it in harmony with that. I am also trying to simplify the paintings i.e if I am thrilled by the light and dark of a face I want to now leave it at that, not add in the body, the clothes etc. to make it make sense to the viewer because then it loses it's aesthetic logic which (I need to remember) is not everyday logic. A face can live by itself in a painting in a mass of dark - it doesn't need an more references to an environment and a body; it doesn't need to eat and walk or anything else that we need in our everyday, physical reality because it's world is one of philosophic, aesthetic, poetic reality - it is an idea.

I am no good at finishing paintings in the traditional sense, and mostly doing it makes me unhappy. This painting - started and thought about for a week, and then finished in two days (as opposed to 2 quite miserable months of worrying and killing the thing) was lovely to do.

[Alexandra Tyng]

I'm not sure what "traditional" means anyway. There are such a wide variety of styles to look back over and learn from. The impressionists and Lucian Freud seem traditional in comparison to Jackson Pollock.

People forget what painting is. There is more joy in the process than in the product. That's why we do it.

[Kevin Spaulding]

There's a lovely, almost plaintive quality to your work, the way the subject vacantly looks towards the viewer, perhaps lost in her thoughts. The 'vagueness' is echoed in the beautiful, subtle lighting, muted colors, and masterful brushwork. I can also see in your other work an inclination to experiment: a healthy attribute for any serious artist. Thanks for sharing.

[Carlos Ygoa]

Thopmasin,

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[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Alex, you are right - as always.

Kevin, thanks for your insight about the painting. It is very helpful to hear comments like yours, as it makes me look at my work much more objectively, as though someone else had painted it. And, of course, I like very much to hear that people like what I have done, but such as positive response is inspiring because the aspects that are being spoken of I know how I did them, and what my mental attitude was at the time, and so can move on logically forwards.

Carlos, thank-you also for your warm enthusiasm. You're right about wanting to please others and yourself at the same time being tricky - it is, but I think that we ourselves are, in fact, good examples of our audience and if we are not getting good responses, we are not having those responses ourselves to our own work i.e we are not really being honest about what it is we want to paint (at least I think so, or at least it seems so for my own work).

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Carlos, the zoom feature is part of the artspan website design - I don't know how to design that feature myself. Sorry!