barbaraearlthomas.com
@barbaraearlthomas

Barbara Earl Thomas is a Seattle-based visual artist with numerous national exhibits to her credit and an active artmaking career that spans 35 years. A skilled painter, Thomas now builds tension-filled narratives through papercuts and prints, placing silhouetted figures in social and political landscapes. She pulls from mythology and history to create a contemporary visual narrative that challenges the stories Americans tell about who we are. Thomas is also known for large-scale installations that use light as an animating force, inviting her viewers to step inside her world of illuminated scenography. Thomas’s works are included in the collections of the Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland Art Museums; Chrysler Museum of Art, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Microsoft, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Washington State and Seattle City public collections. She received her BA and MFA from the University of Washington School of Art. Thomas recently completed commissioned work at Yale University's Hopper College as well as two major exhibitions: Geography of Innocence, Seattle Art Museum, Nov. 2020 through Jan. 2022; and Packaged Black, a collaboration with New York artist Derrick at the Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Oct. 2021 through May 2022. The artist's recent and upcoming solo exhibits include Claire Oliver Gallery (New York, NY), November 2022, Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, VA), February 2023, Wichita Museum of Art, (Wichita, KS) October 2023, and UPenn, (Philadelphia, PA) February 2024.“Most everything I make is up for inB

“I tell stories in words and images. Some are traditional narratives while others are symbolic and live in the realm of ideas and metaphors. It’s the idea that intrigues me and tugs at the end of my thoughts. It’s the structural and symbolic uses of light employed as a technical device to create the forms, in this case, the bodies, that take shape through each cut to reveal something about the subject to the viewer. The colors — beneath the silhouetted figures propelled by what appears to be an unseen light source — are positioned to move the viewer’s eye around the images. These artistic sleights of hand are the tools I use to excavate and research as I reveal the essence of my subject and build the composition. I’ve come to this paper-cutting art form from my work in glass where I masked surfaces and cut into the frisket to reveal my images by sandblasting through black enameled surfaces to expose the transparent color beneath the enamel that allows the light to animate the vessel.”

“I am a watcher, a monitor. I am not unlike a belt on the turntable's arm with its needle nervously tracking and recording the heart’s rate as songs, words, shouts, and screams, sounds that fill the cracks in the pavement and ruptured spaces left by our missteps, insults, reproaches, wars, struggles, upheavals, and daily domestic diseases in a world that always seems to be falling apart. I record, retell, and give these stories back to my audience with the hope people will find some part of themselves in my retelling.”

“Light is an animator. I use it to guide the eye, create shadows and recesses, create visual music. When I’m not using glass, which is inherently a conductor of light, I’m driven to create the illusion of light in my paper cuts to unearth stories around our shared fears and desires.”

Barbara Earl Thomas

Carol Milne

Brandon Vosika