| For this new body of paintings, Will traveled into the British countryside in search of change. He was sent there by Jack Dunleavy, a friend and art historian who had suggested landscape painting as a way out of a rut. It was an attempt to bring joy back into his process.
As he spent time working outdoors, something began to reveal itself in his paintings: a barrier. A sense of unease and the feeling that nature was positioning itself against him. The countryside did not want him there, or worse: it was apathetic toward his presence. Like experiencing an earthquake for the first time, the unforgiving quality of nature became glaringly obvious.
The subject matter of the paintings turned towards these barriers. The glare from a car window, the fog, rain, and doors that represented a “failure to engage” with nature.
These paintings represent Will’s struggle to engage with the world around him, to remain sensitive to the human experience. They are a reminder that there are barriers all around us – political, physical, psychological forces that want to pull us away from ourselves, from each other, and from the world we live in.
Or as Will describes it:
“Thinking more and more about detachment from the countryside, another theme emerged. There were two halves to each painting. Split by a line, or a tree, or a towel. These two halves seem to represent the relationship between me and the subject. Normality vs surreality; what I see vs what it sees; where I can roam vs where I can’t. I decided to go back to the person that told me to look to landscapes if in need of painterly stability, to ask him why!
Jack came to look at the works. He said they were unusual. Landscapes orientated as portraits and the first painting is a towel thrown over a door.”
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Two Hundred Pounds Of Cement is a show of 10 small landscape paintings. 10 remnants to remember our own humanity, no matter what obstacles stand in our way.
Save the date for Saturday, June 10th from 5—8pm to join us and Will Thomson for an opening reception.
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Will Thomson, Two Hundred Pounds Of Cement
opening reception
Saturday, June 10
5—8pm
536 Davis St, San Francisco |
