visual art
artist statement
I stepped into the visual arts in the 1970s as a documentary photographer with a penchant for photographing people. When my need to connect more deeply with my subjects prompted me to record their stories on tape as well as film, I realized that visual and verbal images make good bedfellows. In the 1980s, my desire to turn the lens inward superseded my urge to focus on others. I shelved my tape recorder and grabbed a pen, retired my camera and reached for a brush. I began painting with a Jungian art therapist. In the 1990s, I turned to process painting—painting spontaneously without analysis or judgment. In both approaches, content overshadowed artistic convention—hence the outsider, psychological quality of my early work. In 2005, I shifted to oil pastel, and currently I delight in monotype printmaking. Although my subjects have become less introspective, intuition continues to be my trusted guide. To eliminate the possibility that descriptive titles would bias the viewer’s response to my paintings, I have identified each one by number only. I invite the viewer to approach the paintings in the same spirit that I have created them—with openness and curiosity.
artist biography
With a major in biology from Wells College and a MAT from Johns Hopkins, I began teaching biology. Later, I designed a course in cultural anthropology. The shift in focus foretold my passion for story—both others’ and my own. To enrich the anthropology class for my students, I recorded an interview with an African-American woman raised on the farm her father owned in Alabama. The oral history You May Plow Here—and a traveling exhibit of photographs made in rural Alabama in the 1970s—were the ultimate outcome. To deepen my understanding of culture, I sojourned in a Greek village where I immersed myself in daily life. Eventually, I published Dancing Girl, a blend of villagers’ stories and my own—accompanied by photographs. (I also purchased a roofless village house that I restored by hand, and I became an independent travel guide in Greece.) My recent book, Dances in Two Worlds, describes the experiences that have shaped my life as a photographer, writer, painter, and stonemason. I hope the stories—both painted and written—will catalyze the reader-viewer’s own bold adventures in life and in art. I live alternately between Denver, Colorado and Elika, Greece.
—Thordis Simonsen