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Noel Thomas
October 11, 2008
More About the Artist:
Noel Thomas
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For Immediate Release:
Noel Thomas Displays New Techniques in RiverSea Show
RiverSea Gallery exhibits an established artist evolving with each stroke
RiverSea Gallery's newest show, Noel Thomas: Out and Around,
is a surprising collection of paintings by this renowned and talented artist from Astoria. An opening reception
takes place Saturday October 11th from 5:00 to 8:00 p.m. with live music provided by Johnnie Ward.
The show will be on display through November 4th.
It can be easy to classify Noel Thomas as primarily a great painter of sea-faring ships and sweeping vistas.
It would be easy, but it would also be underestimating and misinterpreting an artist of broad skills and
staggering depth.
"I think everything is connected in a way," says Thomas, what I feel about a subject, and trying to make it
interesting and different than what you've seen before."
For those who don't know, Thomas is a Longview Washington born native son, turned Los Angeles ad man,
turned miniature house model maker, turned fine art painter.
After an early stint in the army, Thomas remembered the fateful words of an eighth grade art teacher who once
proclaimed, "You need to go to the Los Angeles Art Center."
Thomas ended up doing just that, and shortly shot to the top of the fiercely competitive advertising field.
After making his mark as a top Art Director on Madison Avenue and in Los Angeles, working with the
likes of Farrah Fawcett and other celebrities, and garnering a CLIO Award along the way, Thomas let it go.
"I was very successful in advertising, but it's a rough game, it's very tough," says Thomas.
He stumbled upon a slightly more relaxing career making internationally acclaimed miniature houses with
his wife Patricia Staton. The houses developed an avid following, with some ending up in museum
collections. The two still teach highly sought after workshops in the field.
But it was in 1988, that Thomas found his true calling as a fine artist. And after a bit of
experimentation, Thomas found his medium: watercolor.
Much like his career in the ad industry Thomas quickly shot to the top of the game, and after many years
of trying, earned acceptance as a Signature Member of the American Watercolor Society, the most
prestigious accolade an artist of the medium can achieve.
As a skilled draftsman with a keen sense of composition, Thomas' loose style and bold graphic design
have caught the eye of critics and collectors worldwide. His paintings are in hundreds of public
and private collections.
After living in Seaview, Washington, for a number of years, Thomas finally decided to call Astoria
home in 2000, and never looked back. Inspired by just about everything he saw, his painting entered
new realms.
Thomas primarily works from photos, memories, and sometimes stories shared by fellow artists and
friends. But each work takes on a life of its own. The composition is dictated by Thomas' unique
emotional reaction to a given scene or place.
"As far as subject matter goes I'm all over the map with that, I always have been," explains Thomas.
So why doesn't Thomas pick a theme, or a category, and stick to it? Not his style. To Thomas, each painting
is its own body of work.
"It's how I feel about that subject at that time," says Thomas.
Thomas does not just make pretty pictures of boats or serene landscapes. Above all, he hopes that the love
he feels for the old boats is what comes through in the paintings.
"The wounds they show in their hulls are like little medals to me, I hope that comes across in my painting as
opposed to just being a portrait of a boat," says Thomas.
When Thomas strikes a rich vein, he sometimes will explore it fervently with a few paintings or more.
"Then I'm satiated with that subject," says Thomas.
And again, there's always room for surprises.
"Sometimes something just goofy comes to mind," explains Noel.
For example, in one of his small oil pastels, Thomas has rendered a vibrant can of Spam. Yes,
Spam.
"I mean, it's an icon, it helped us get through the Second World War."
Again, it's affection for the subject that drives the process. In this case, the hard packed salty ham
product is laden with memory.
"Mom would cut it up just as it appeared on the can," Thomas explains. "She would pour maple syrup on top
and just bake it in the oven. I loved it!"
That's not to say Thomas' work is never cathartic or personally transformative. Thomas has even tackled his own
prejudices through painting, like when he worked a series of nine images of women with Rubenesque figures.
"By the time I got to the ninth painting, the subject was exuberant and happy, and I was too."
And if you've followed his work through the years, similar subjects have yielded increasingly different results. A lot of that
has to do with Thomas' willingness to take chances, and experiment with new materials and new ideas.
He recently introduced a few new mediums into his tool box: toned paper with oil pastels, Bristol plate drafting paper, and
even a form of photographic plastic. These unusual surfaces are not intended for use with watercolor.
"I've always been a little bit prone to breaking rules for some reason," laughs Thomas, who has come to realize
that unpredictability does not mean mistake. "It's almost like the paint has a mind of its own," explains Thomas.
"You come back after it's dry and it's moved around a little bit; it gives a unique freshness and texture to the painting."
With this new adventure, Thomas has found himself playing with the texture more, and layering colors in a way previously
impossible.
Several of Thomas' paintings in this show are done on an archival plastic film, perhaps the surface he's most excited about.
"That's a lot of fun to work with," says Thomas. "There's absolutely no absorption into the fabric. In that process you get
a whole lot of things that just happen. You paint in stages. Layer, dry, go back, and lay more in on top. It takes
on a character of its own that you can't get out of a brush."
Thomas' sensitivity to the subject is sometimes most evident in what at first appear to be very simple works.
Under his skilled hand, a troller bursts blue, the lines of rope become bits of poetry: an invitation to explore the past,
present, and future of these intrinsic artifacts of our inherited cultural milieu.
In one of the most striking pieces from this show, an absolutely massive hull of a rusted old ship is juxtaposed against a
diminutive pilot boat puttering up against it.
The textures, paint drips, dents and crackles, tell the story of a reliable if somewhat battered vessel enduring years
upon a massive and unforgiving sea, and its diminutive but equally indefatigable guide churning out a route wrought with
peril but promising prosperity.
For Noel Thomas, the creative journey has been a long road, full of surprises, sometimes each one better than the last.
These marvelous paintings attest to just that.
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