The pulse of color and the play of light and texture are constant sources of stimulation. Color creates light, light creates form. To generate depth, energy and movement with illusions of volume, space, light, and time - this is why I paint.
The art on this website has been created between 2011 and 2016 and is printed using archival pigment dyes on cotton rag watercolor papers. Wood, aluminum, fabric, and collage substrates, as well as encaustic paint add further dimension to the work. Other materials and tools include pigment sticks, watercolors, gouache, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Corel Painter, Wacom tablet, computer, digital cameras, & iPad. I start my work with sketches or paint on paper, often moving onto my computer, continuing to paint or draw with a stylus and digital tablet. Playing with both intent and accident, I build images in layers, whether working on the computer or working with wax or paint.
My first career was designing, weaving, and marketing hand woven rag rugs. Colorful and whimsical, they sold in many prominent stores across the country. After many years of weaving rugs, I decided to combine my sense of color with my love of the written word and move into the field of illustration. I created editorial illustration for magazines, book publishing, packaging, logo design, tiny pop-up books and huge murals for museums. So many images for so many purposes that I have finally been driven to abstraction.
After 15 years of illustration (illuminating words with images), I am now imaging patterns of communication and human interaction. My paintings record my abstracted, layered and introspective experience of encounters with people, books, media, conversations with myself, and the world. Good communication requires kinetic creativity, many layers of light, texture, balance, nuance, and surprise. Pattern and repetition, rhythm and interruption make up ours lives. Geometry bridges the inner and outer worlds, adds structure and sense, both ancient and contemporary.
I was educated at Antioch College, the Art Institute of Boston, Massachusetts College of Art, and Rhode Island School of Design. I am a member of the Graphic Artists Guild and the Boston Printmakers.
PRESS RELEASE for solo exhibit at the Galley at R&F in Kingston, New York –– May 7 - July 16, 2016
The Gallery at R&F is pleased to present Marina Thompson’s solo exhibit New Prints, Ancient Wax. Her inspired, richly layered prints are dynamic, non-figurative, and highly coloristic. Thompson explores complex layers of shape, texture and light, often triggered by simple things—shadows on the floor or a small pattern in the garden—but utterly transformed by her vision. This exhibit merges new technologies and materials in printmaking with oil paint, gouache, flashe, and the ancient art of encaustic.
Bucking traditions of galleries and printmaking, Thompson prefers not to work in series: "Because of my design process on the computer, I take time to fully develop my ideas before beginning an encaustic work. Often I produce a prototype to work out technical issues before I develop a fully realized image. When I am finished with a piece, I move on. I can repeat a form, but rarely do so unless there is a visual demand”. Thompson’s featured works clearly show what she means by “visual demand”.
Thompson grew up surrounded by mid-20th century high-end, revolutionary domestic architecture and design. As a child and adult she worked at Design Research, her father’s iconic store that introduced the American public to Scandinavian furniture, housewares, packaging and surface design (Marimekko). Those distinct Modernist influences, her work in her father’s architectural office, plus such artists as Howard Hodgkin, Paul Klee, Josef and Anni Albers, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Calder, Cy Twomby, and Brice Marden, and her former careers in textile design and illustration, all inform her work.
Ms. Thompson has a BA from Antioch College. She has pursued illustration at the Boston Art Institute, and surface and industrial design in Rhode Island School of Design’s graduate programs. Her design work has been honored for its innovations in national and international magazines. She has painted large-scale murals for the Miami Children’s Museum, designed children’s wear for Marimekko, and produced and marketed a line of hand woven rugs under her name. Her work is included in the Children’s Hospitals in Denver and Boston, and the collection of Ann and Graham Gund. She has a forthcoming show, Reversible Floating Spaces, at Fitchburg State University, September 1 - Oct 27, 2016.
The art on this website has been created between 2011 and 2016 and is printed using archival pigment dyes on cotton rag watercolor papers. Wood, aluminum, fabric, and collage substrates, as well as encaustic paint add further dimension to the work. Other materials and tools include pigment sticks, watercolors, gouache, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, Corel Painter, Wacom tablet, computer, digital cameras, & iPad. I start my work with sketches or paint on paper, often moving onto my computer, continuing to paint or draw with a stylus and digital tablet. Playing with both intent and accident, I build images in layers, whether working on the computer or working with wax or paint.
My first career was designing, weaving, and marketing hand woven rag rugs. Colorful and whimsical, they sold in many prominent stores across the country. After many years of weaving rugs, I decided to combine my sense of color with my love of the written word and move into the field of illustration. I created editorial illustration for magazines, book publishing, packaging, logo design, tiny pop-up books and huge murals for museums. So many images for so many purposes that I have finally been driven to abstraction.
After 15 years of illustration (illuminating words with images), I am now imaging patterns of communication and human interaction. My paintings record my abstracted, layered and introspective experience of encounters with people, books, media, conversations with myself, and the world. Good communication requires kinetic creativity, many layers of light, texture, balance, nuance, and surprise. Pattern and repetition, rhythm and interruption make up ours lives. Geometry bridges the inner and outer worlds, adds structure and sense, both ancient and contemporary.
I was educated at Antioch College, the Art Institute of Boston, Massachusetts College of Art, and Rhode Island School of Design. I am a member of the Graphic Artists Guild and the Boston Printmakers.
PRESS RELEASE for solo exhibit at the Galley at R&F in Kingston, New York –– May 7 - July 16, 2016
The Gallery at R&F is pleased to present Marina Thompson’s solo exhibit New Prints, Ancient Wax. Her inspired, richly layered prints are dynamic, non-figurative, and highly coloristic. Thompson explores complex layers of shape, texture and light, often triggered by simple things—shadows on the floor or a small pattern in the garden—but utterly transformed by her vision. This exhibit merges new technologies and materials in printmaking with oil paint, gouache, flashe, and the ancient art of encaustic.
Bucking traditions of galleries and printmaking, Thompson prefers not to work in series: "Because of my design process on the computer, I take time to fully develop my ideas before beginning an encaustic work. Often I produce a prototype to work out technical issues before I develop a fully realized image. When I am finished with a piece, I move on. I can repeat a form, but rarely do so unless there is a visual demand”. Thompson’s featured works clearly show what she means by “visual demand”.
Thompson grew up surrounded by mid-20th century high-end, revolutionary domestic architecture and design. As a child and adult she worked at Design Research, her father’s iconic store that introduced the American public to Scandinavian furniture, housewares, packaging and surface design (Marimekko). Those distinct Modernist influences, her work in her father’s architectural office, plus such artists as Howard Hodgkin, Paul Klee, Josef and Anni Albers, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Calder, Cy Twomby, and Brice Marden, and her former careers in textile design and illustration, all inform her work.
Ms. Thompson has a BA from Antioch College. She has pursued illustration at the Boston Art Institute, and surface and industrial design in Rhode Island School of Design’s graduate programs. Her design work has been honored for its innovations in national and international magazines. She has painted large-scale murals for the Miami Children’s Museum, designed children’s wear for Marimekko, and produced and marketed a line of hand woven rugs under her name. Her work is included in the Children’s Hospitals in Denver and Boston, and the collection of Ann and Graham Gund. She has a forthcoming show, Reversible Floating Spaces, at Fitchburg State University, September 1 - Oct 27, 2016.
