ARTIST STATEMENT

In my work I tend to pare down visual impressions, which is a refinement my senses enjoy, and the result is abstraction. Elements of landscape are usually the springboard -- and spaciousness is where I play. Lively pockets of activity speak to the viewer within layers of painted history, much of it  rich with life and possibility. And there is always the 'space' which remains, somehow present, comfortable and embracing. The mindful awareness of Space is the stage upon which all else lives and moves -- vast, recognizable, within the reach of our imaginations, but just beyond what we can fully grasp. I am energized by this notion and by inner landscapes -- the places I visit when I close my eyes. 

ABOUT

My visual vocabulary is inspired by places I have lived, visited and experienced.  I am interested in the ways in which the mind intuitively responds to nature through color and mark making. In early childhood, I began to find magic and inspiration in the world around me. My mother encouraged this curiosity as I made solitary journeys into the woods and forests near our Appalachian home.  My father, who was also an artist, encouraged me to draw and paint what I saw there. Creating visual studies of trees, wildflowers, herbs, and wildlife, I turned over rocks to observe the life teeming beneath them, and I brought tadpoles home, nurturing them into froglets. These places of childhood adventure were filled with learning about the intricacies of life, quiet, busy and fertile. Observing them ignited my young spiritual world -- and so began a lifelong quest of seeking out sacred spaces and their mythologies. When I became just a little older, my world grew through travel. I learned to appreciate the vastness of endless fields, deserts, and oceans. I experienced aspects of the elements in an intimately sacred way as they exist above, below and within us -- and I longed to express it.

Tresa Thompson is a full-time painter with studios in Lexington, Kentucky and Jacksonville Beach, Florida.