Sleeping Figures

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

This is just finished. It is 40" x 30", oil on canvas. It underwent many changes, starting out as a running athlete.

I am now very excited to start another painting on my new clear-primed linen after the recommendation by Chris Saper, and the advice from Sharon Knettell.

[Chris Saper]

This is a powerful painting - and, at least to me, on many levels. I find it provocative and interesting and even worrisome. I do not mean that worrisome is a bad thing - it creates a memory, an inquiry on the part of the viewer that contains an elusive narrative quality that I personally value in art.

While I think that this is not an image that would fall into any type of traditional commissioned art, I really enjoy viewing it It invloves me viscerally in the same way as Sophie Jodoin's work

[Carlos Ygoa]

Thomasin,

I admire the "unfinished-ness" of this piece (and I use this word as opposed to the slick, polished finishes) and of your work in general because you have a way of handling that quality and exploiting it so that the piece actually does look finished. The suggested details, the fusing of some of the background with forms at certain points of their outline making it disappear at the same time gaining relief from the background; and the way you model form and endow it with a very tangible quality--very enviable!

Nice to see your work here again.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thank-you for your insightful comments, Chris. I appreciate you taking the time to comment. And thanks also for giving us the the link to Sophie Jodoin - I did not know about her. Her work is very tactile and her drawing is very good, which makes her pieces quite mesmerizing.

Carlos, thank-you also for your intelligent comments. I find that finishing a painting in a traditional sense loses something of what makes me want to work a painting through to a conclusion. It is the marks that are the beginnings of something - those that are trying to find a form or expressing a gut feeling of a form that are most meaningful.

It's nice to be back. I only hope that my work appears traditional enough so that I can continue to be allowed to post here!

[Ilaria Rosselli Del Turco]

Thomasin,it is always very inspiring to see your work.
Especially here I find repetition with variation a wonderful occasion for you to go deeper into the examination of the figure.
Depth and mystery for me are the most strong components of your work, the ones that make it so appealing to me.

I also believe that there is no reason whatsoever not to post your works here, even as they get more and more personal and further away from "tradition".
We should all strive to be painters before being portrait painters. Seeing personal work , where an artist explores the possibilities of representation of the head and figure, should help us wondering about why we paint at all.

Ilaria

[Michele Rushworth]

What wonderful skintones!

[Alexandra Tyng]

Thomasin,

It's as if the family is swimming together in an unconscious state. I keep wondering what they are dreaming, whether their dreams overlap. On a literal level, it's disturbing, but at the same time it doesn't ask to be taken literally, there are so many possibilities of meaning. Looking at it evokes a jumble of emotions and questions.

The skin is beautifully painted, and so is the sheet fabric. I love how the figures melt into the sheets in some places, and stand out so clearly from them in other areas. I know Carlos already mentioned this very skillful use of edges but I had to mention it because it is one of the first things I noticed as far as technique. It seems that your backgrounds have undergone a gradual transformation towards being fully integrated with your figures. I think the figure/ground relationship is very well expressed in this painting, and I admire it very much.