☰ Jonathan Thomson Art

White Girls

This series of paintings are an expression of the eternal feminine. In all of these works the flattening of the image and its strict delineation through line reduces the body to a series of arabesques without colour, shading or tone.

Eroticism is the most direct and immediate way of captivating the senses and it is through the senses that we understand the aesthetics of beauty, rather than through either the rational and conceptual knowledge of science and philosophy or the structures and systems of ethics and morality. More than any other subject, the nude signifies "Art". It is not just one subject among many, but is the central subject. The nude is a canon of perfection, an expression of universal and eternal values.

Dazzle

The works in this series explore notions of revelation and concealment. The disruptive patterns employed in these works are inspired by shadows in bright sunlight and the form of camouflage known as "Dazzle" that was invented during the First World War as a way of protecting Allied shipping from the torpedoes of German submarines. Dazzle is the antithesis of camouflage. The primary object of the scheme was not to hide the ship, which was impossible, but to break up her form and mislead the enemy as to her size and speed and direction of travel. These works led to my interest in shadows.