Boy with Knee Up

[Alexandra Tyng]

Oh my gosh, Thomasin, this is wonderful! I'm running out of adjectives. This is such a textural, tactile painting. The way you have contrasted the fresh, alive, smooth, even glossy skin (kneecap included) with the rough background is uniquely your way, and i love it. I also love the way his knee "holds up" the right side of the composition whch would otherwise be dragged down by the sharp diagonal. Where would the composition be without that diagonal stroke that creates movement and spatial depth? The knee makes it work. I really feel the concept behind this.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thanks so much. Alex!

[Carlos Ygoa]

Thomasin,
Have been away for a while and am just now getting updated on what

[Tom Edgerton]

Thomasin--

Really fine! Love the atmosphere of it...

Is your technique more additive (piling on) or subtractive (scraping off)? These remind me of abstracts a local guy here paints, with a beautifully pearly and dense surface. When he's done with a piece, there's more paint on the floor than the painting, the surface having been heavily scraped between each layer. Each painting looks as if it weighs a ton, but there's no other way for him to get that accumulated result. Your (oil) paintings have a similar feeling of material "weight."

Can you describe?

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Carlos, thank-you very much. Yes, this is a group show at the Blackheath.

Thank-you, too, Tom. Yes I do a lot of scraping off, but I also use a lot of light touches too. The scrapings-off push the paint that is left on the canvas into the gaps between the canvas threads and give an actual physical, sculptural depth to the image. The light scumbled marks bring the paint forward physically and sculpturally, and together this give a great feeling of tactile modelling. So the front of the leg, or the most prominent parts of the cheeks, for example, would be scumbled and brought forward and the underside of the chin, again, for example, might be left in its scraped-off stage, or pushed hard back into the canvas with the paint brush. My paint marks are a combination of the descriptive (the outlines, the colour, the drawing) and the sculptural.

[Chris Saper]

I apologize for missing this post- it's just lovely.

Kudos to you,

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Thank-you very much, Chris. I apologize for missing your reply!