Appointed 1999
Major Area: Printmaking
Office Address: 234 Tyler Hall
Office Phone: (315) 312-3189

BFA, The Center for Creative Studies
MFA, University of Michigan

http://www.oswego.edu/~mthomas/
mthomas@oswego.edu

Artist Statement

In retrospect, the thread running through my creative work has been reflective of what I call the sense of "finding one's grain". That is to say: examining, measuring the finesse, the aperture of the sieve through which one sifts and refracts a sense of life. For me the expression is most fully realized not only through a sense of vision and thought, but of touch and of intuition both right and wrong. The result is mute and static although I would prefer if it might offer sound, movement (maybe someday).

I'm the one who moves. I select the resources, filter the images. Trace the influences from a broadening notion of description. One cultivated from the visual interpretation of data, modelling, video, the technologies and sense of the presentday. Also our relation to what we construe as nature. We are creatures of our time and I am interested in the way we observe now which I am convinced is much different than ten or a hundred years ago. In my case, an image layered and flowed into a frozen presence: a painting. I shoot for a fragment that is descriptive of the complexity and richness of world-view, NOW. A place where we cohabit with collected experience and sensed pattern. A culture where there is more scope of possibility, more chaos, more intricacy than ever before. Where I find myself shaped towards the unexpected awareness. This, I equate to growth.

This idea of "a sense of grain" has it's origins in my experience creating and collaborating on printed works. Grain is intrinsic to the mediums and materials of "traditional printmaking". It is found in wood, on stone, through metal and is my stepping off point towards an oeuvre which may extend the boundaries of tradition. The most recent strain of work (and there are several) has focused on what are essentially printed paintings in which I have transposed printmaking process onto a somewhat non-trad. substrate: wood. The life and history beneath and through the wood is the surface to which the images are bound. It offers a deep backdrop on which to cast light. Material choice often mates concept to object. And the various incarnations of work I indulge in (be it painting, sculpture, print or electronic) take breadth and life from the tactility of moving and mauling real physical materials into new forms of vision.