|
|
|
Selected Reviews
James David Thomas’s works are infused with a sense of peace. In “Haiku for November 9” (2004) A bowl waits in a limbo of blue and gray while exactly four drops of gold leaf fall from the sky like grace A series of six small works in oil and gold leaf were painted on heavily grained wood panels that provided texture. In Thomas’s paintings of Koi the grain doubles as rippling pond water. In one of the six, “Window of Appearances” (2004) gold leaf also sifts downward toward a simple Japanese teacup, while a rare gemstone hovers over everything like the third eye of Buddha. Arlene McKanic, ARTnews March 2005
James David Thomas’s explorations of nature are informed by both Western and Asian traditions. There is a sense of Mystery in his dedication to certain kinds of space, which conceals as much as it reveals. The artist’s mother was Japanese, and so there is in his work a finesse and sense of the magical moment that connects him to her culture. In a small work entitled “Singularity”(2004), the center is devoted to a spiraling galaxy of stars, beneath which two fish swim in the darkness together. The combination of the image is lyrical, almost to the point of being beyond words: two kinds of nature poetically evoked... Jonathan Goodman, “Romancing Nature” Catalog 2004
Compressed scale and the keen blend of medium and image lend boldness to James David Thomas’s series of tiny square-format paintings on wood panel. Currents of water in the imagery interact with the actual grain in the wood base, a case of image-making and host media being locked in an unusual tight embrace. Josef Woodard, Santa Barbara News Press, 2004
James David Thomas is an unabashed romantic in that these lyrical, idealized images are rooted in the idea that man’s relationship with nature is the same as it ever was–that there are still places in the world where one can escape the wooshing sound of freeways, that we’re capable of communing with our environment without feeling the drive to dominate it or convert it to cash. Thomas makes no illusion to the fact that our methods for aggressing against nature grow more diabolic with every passing year, and that the very mood he paints–the peaceful introspection that comes when one senses oneself as being in harmony with the universe – is on the endangered species list. Kristine McKenna, Los Angeles Times Art review July 1990
A different tale is told in James David Thomas’ “Empire of Light”, a tall vertical painting in which the Hollywood sign below is almost a footnote to the vast, color-changing sky above. Toward the top, stars render the machinations of Hollywood, (culture) trivial by cosmic standards. Josef Woodard, Santa Barbara News Press, 2007 ♦ |
|
Reviews |
