Antonia-Thompson-artist

I love texture and apply paint to canvas instinctively, with a pallet knife, brushes, sponges even my hands - applying layer after layer of colour. I am very gestural in my approach and the act of painting is as important as the subject, applying the paint is a memory, a celebration, ultimately a search for a beauty and intimacy that resonates with the viewer.

If you look at my instgram feed below you will some many photos and reels from my practice including photos of things that inspire me. I work with landscape and still life. I paint outside, ‘en plein air’ but also from memory and also aspirational landscapes - like snowscapes painted from photographs and memory. Recent jaunts have seen me up on the South Downs and Ashdown Forest.


Last summer I was very pre-occupied with painting the light on the wild flowers that kept popping up in my plein air landscapes, so this year's resulting still life paintings are the natural progression.

I start from life and the pieces take on lives of their own. In each work, (painted on my kitchen table not in my studio) there with different memories, some of childhood gardens where I played and my imagination ran riot, some are discarded wedding flowers. Others are vases displayed in grand homes that smell of opulence.

What is really important is that the flowers produced in these still life paintings have never existed except in my imagination. So the peonies, lilies or daffodils you see, are a seed for your eyes seek your own truth. My idea that started with the pink roses that grew in the dull clay soil at my childhood home may trigger something different in the viewer. Overall, whether you see the simple daisies that offer the promise of a childish bracelet with a butterfly’s life-span. They actually all never die, never wilt, but live on in painted texture and colour.


AntoniaThompson

Originally from Harrogate, Antonia Thompson studied Fine Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. She practised as an artist in Scotland in the 90s and then retrained as a media professional where she worked in online journalism for 14 years. 2015 saw her return to her professional art practice.