Two Figures

[Sharon Knettell]

Originally Posted by Mischa Milosevic

I would like to see more of this kind of work from you. I believe that if you paint with this kind of intensity, defining your self with this stile of work, and what ever you use as your subject will bring you true satisfaction.

Mischa,

I do think she said that this was an older piece. What I love about Thomasin is that she is fearless and able to go beyond what has been successful for her. What will bring her true happiness is something that only she can find out proceeding with her life and with her art.

No one can judge this for her.

Artists become stale, rigid and irrelevant, no matter how skilled they are; if they are unwilling to further experiment with their work and cast off inhibiting preconditions and ideas. That takes courage and she has it in spades.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Allan, thank-you very much for your comments. I was influenced by Degas at the time of painting this, and also Picasso's early works.

Carlos, thank-you also very much for your kind remarks. I am glad you like it.

Mischa, I wish I could paint like this again, but it is quite difficult to return to an earlier style and keep the marks convincing. Thank-you for your generous comments, though. They are appreciated.

Sharon, thank-you for taking so much time to think about my work. You are such a great support for me! And thank-you for your kind comments about this painting. They're very much appreciated.

Thank-you, Enzie, too for your comments. I am pleased you like it.

[Alexandra Tyng]

Thomasin,

I love taking another look at your earlier work (as I've seen it many times on your website), and thinking about it in comparison to your newer work.

There's an honesty, a lack of stylization, to your nudes which is fascinating, all the more so because many people would argue that idealizaton of the human form is necessary to imbue the nude with meaning, or to raise it to an allegorical level. I prefer this kind of painting because the figures speak to me. Their bodies and facial exprsssions form a whole. They are real people, and yet they represent something you don't have to describe in words. You just feel it. In this way I find our early work utterly engaging and very consistent with your recent work.

I agree that you cannot go backwards. You must go forwards and follow your instinct. There is no other way!

Thank you for this perspective on your work!

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thank you very much, Alex. I am pleased you see a consistency between my early work and my new work - sometimes I can't. To me my work often seems like such a motley collection of ideas, not at all representative of a professional artist. There is such a change in myself from when I painted my early work and now, that looking at my early painting is like looking at the work of another artist and trying to work out how it was done.

[Alexandra Tyng]

Originally Posted by Thomasin Dewhurst

There is such a change in myself from when I painted my early work and now, that looking at my early painting is like looking at the work of another artist and trying to work out how it was done.

Thomasin, believe me I know exactly what you mean! I have had a similar experience. Other people seem to recognize my early work as being mine, though to me it looks like another hand painted it. I believe that the markers by which other people identify an artist's style are the very things the artists think they need to work on, even overcome (though that never can actually happen).

To be honest, if I hadn't known it was yours I might not have been certain, but I might have thought there was a "Thomasinian" quality about the figures and expressions. And of course your way of using color was quite different then. But I like the same things about this older piece that I do about your newer work. There is the same evidence of a creative process in the faces and figures, maybe a struggle to say something that is uniquely your vision. The result is this illusion of stretching and moulding and becoming right on the canvas.