Opening reception: Friday, October 10, 5-7 PM | Artist talk with Esmé Thompson and Patrick Dunfey: Friday, October 17, 5:30-7:00 PM
Esmé Thompson | Recent Paintings | E.N. Wennberg Gallery
Exhibition Statement | This immersive work consists of painted, shaped wooden panels arranged to create a choreographed sequence of design and color that flows through the space. The paintings on the walls are grouped by tone and hue, guiding visitors through an impression of dawn on the first wall, to the brilliance of daylight on the center wall, and finally into the deepening colors of evening and night on the third. For decades, Thompson has explored painting as an environment—an art form that doesn’t simply hang on walls, but surrounds, guides, and transforms the viewer’s sense of space. Her work has taken many forms: labyrinths of painted Plexiglas screens, shaped canvases, and multi-panel compositions. Her piece Blue Divide was described by the Hood Museum in 2011 as “a serial work that emphasizes both pattern and repetition. While its individual elements function as separate small paintings, they also work as parts of a larger whole, echoing and mirroring the works either adjacent to them or positioned similarly within. Thompson has always been interested in how painting and sculpture might intermingle, and she combines these media in ways that challenge their traditional boundaries.” This installation unfolds in four chromatic movements—each a symbolic realm. The divisions, defined by their dominant hues, suggest three symbolic realms: the yellow of dawn, the red of the earth, and the blue of the heavens. Thompson has drawn on her interest in Italian Beatus paintings for the structure of her color hierarchy.
Biography | Esmé Thompson is a New Hampshire–based artist and Professor Emerita of Studio Art at Dartmouth College. An exhibiting member of New York City’s Bowery Gallery, Thompson is known for richly layered works that draw inspiration from art, craft, and design traditions around the world. Her creative practice is fueled by extensive travel and immersive study. In Italy, she has been a resident fellow at both the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bogliasco Foundation, delving into medieval painting and decorative arts. In Morocco, she explored the vibrant worlds of ceramic and fiber art; in Ireland, the intricate beauty of Celtic manuscripts and lacemaking; and in Australia, the profound visual storytelling of Aboriginal art in Kakadu and Uluru. Thompson’s art can be viewed on Artsy.net and at esmethompsonart.com. Her 2011 exhibition at the Hood Museum was accompanied by the catalogue Esmé Thompson: The Alchemy of Design, a testament to her mastery of transforming tradition into contemporary expression.
Artist Statement | Esmé Thompson’s paintings form a topography of painted, stacked wooden shapes that connect and disconnect across gallery walls, evoking natural forces both vast and intimate. Whether suggesting the shifting of tides and winds or the unfolding of a flower, the works are conceived to move and animate within the exhibition space, interacting with one another. Thompson’s practice blurs the boundaries between high and low art, celebrating objects made by human hands across time and cultures. Her work embodies possibility and change, inviting viewers into a cyclical, cumulative experience rather than a linear one. The repeated, interrelated forms create a visual rhythm that unfolds like an organic pattern of growth, encouraging a journey that continues beyond the first encounter.
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