An animator, puppeteer and video artist as much as a painter, Tom Thayer creates intriguing, rough-hewn forms from distinctly analogue materials. Stillness is stained, drawn and sewn on a ground of felt and monk’s cloth. Many of his creations turn up as set designs for his short movies: indeed, Stillness, which seems to beckon us into a hazy yellow, blue and green forest filled with large, perching birds, transcends painting to verge on stage scenery or sculpture. Tails and branches escape the picture plane into real space. Paint drips fantastically upwards. A dreamlike atmosphere descends, as if we are plunged into the depths of the artist’s subconscious. ‘It’s not about making a work of art, but about the experience of exploring’, he says. ‘It all comes out of looking inward, as deeply as I can. The more personal something is, the more universal it becomes’.

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