Thom Wright has combined his passions for art and engineering, and his two practices benefited from each other. Born and raised in Los Angeles, he joined the U. S. Navy after high school and then returned home to go to college. After graduating in 1970 with a BA and MA in mathematics from UCLA and CSULA, he began a successful, 32 year career in aerospace. While working in advanced space systems and technologies development, he began taking art and art history courses at night at local community colleges. He began selling art and successfully entering competitive art shows in 1978.

His interest initially centered in abstract landscape and figurative painting, influenced both by 20th century European modernists and American expressionists. Beginning in 1986, his subject matter moved toward contemporary issues, including technology, geopolitics, and the global environment. His abstract painting style also migrated towards inclusion of industrial materials, found objects and mixed media, which reflect influences of his technical background. These issues and processes continue in his art work.

Desiring to improve his skills, theory and knowledge in art, he took early retirement from the Boeing Corp. in 1999 and entered art school full time. In May, 2006, he completed the MFA program in Drawing and Painting at California State University, Long Beach.


E-mail: thomwrightart@verizon.net
Website: thomwrightart.com

Two of my “Earth Tree” series paintings have been accepted to the Artist Council Inaugural Exhibition of the Huntington Beach Art Center.  My latest one in the series is shown above, which has a more expressionist development and vibrant palette.  The warm tones dominate over the cool blue-green base, with a strong broadside of light and heat from the left.  I would be pleased to see you at the opening or at the artists’ talk evening.  Below are the details of show and my art statement for the Earth Tree series.

I also add a note of good news about my other current show at the Irvine Fine Arts Center.  At the Sept. 20 opening, I received a first place award in painting (third overall) for the three Earth Tree paintings in that show.

OPENING RECEPTION:
Friday, October 10th, 7PM – 9PM
*Musical entertainment by Sebastian Bop
*Catering provided by Cucina Alessa

MEET THE ARTISTS:
ArtWalk Thursday, October 16th, 6:30PM – 8:30PM

LOCATION:
538 Main St., Huntington Beach, CA  92648
www.huntingtonbeachartcenter.org
714-374-1650


ART STATEMENT – EARTH TREE SERIES

Big trees have long inspired humans beyond the utilitarian resources they provide.  Their spirit is uplifting; they grow in annual cycles, becoming massive, towering and long lived wonders. There is extraordinary strength in their limbs and branches, and yet they rhythmically move with the wind.  Each is unique, yet is constantly changing with time and season.  They thrive with earth, water and sun to benefit man and the environment, and symbolically they join the earth with the sky.  In my Cubist and expressionistic painting style, I paint abstractions of these qualities of trees.

Thom Wright

Art Statement
“The Strand at Huntington” Series
By Thom Wright
2009

My art in “The Strand at Huntington” series concerns processes of change of a building site and its consequent transformation of our environment and local culture. A large site in the heart of my town presents a show of architectural stages that began with razing the previous structures and removing the past before building the new.   These in-process scenes are fragments of the whole and something of what will be.  They have its unique geometry and inner structures, its layers and modern building technologies that I translate into layers of mixed media on paper.

Each painting captures some building phase of the events of that site.  I make semi-abstract compositions rather than the completed whole, and investigate the chemistry, weights, shifts, dynamic forces and rhythms of the unfinished state.  My mixed media compositions of shape, space, color, layer and line become my personal expression of transformation and change.


E-mail: thomwrightart@verizon.net
Website: www.thomwrightart.com

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