KIM THOMAN 40 YEARS OF PAINTING

KIM THOMAN 40 YEARS OF PAINTING

Essay by Peter Frank

Wrestling Wit Someting…

By Mara Blackwood

KIM THOMAN

By Peter Frank

1980s –

A VISUAL JOURNEY OF FORTY YEARS

By Jan Wurm

AFTERWORD By Mary Pacios

Kim Thoman - Harmony Through Duality - Bio

By Mara Blackwood, 2020

In a time when there is so much conflict in the world, mixed media artist Kim Thoman finds beauty in opposition. “I am always aware that duality exists in everything,” she explains. “Opposing forces inform the world around me—intellect and intuition, male and female, stillness and movement, body and soul, light and dark, the organized and chaotic, and of course, life and death. I strive to bring these dualities into balance, to present a 'truth' by showing its opposing energies.”

Viewers have felt this balancing force in Thoman’s work. The way she combines opposing colors, textures, and even art forms invokes a feeling of harmony that can create a sanctuary in any space.

Born and raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, Thoman began taking an interest in art when she was very young. She was a quiet child with a rich inner world and a sharp awareness of her surroundings, and it wasn’t long before she was expressing herself through drawing.

Some of her first works of art were imaginary “Moon Flowers,” which “were allowed to look fanciful, but they had to have some function that I deemed important on the moon— for holding gathered food or reaching around a corner, for example,” Thoman recalls. “Requiring that my drawings were of something I enjoyed looking at but that the object drawn also had to have a functional value may have been an early indication of my later developed belief that opposites are in everything.”

Thoman grew up with five siblings, and her whimsical, abstract images often shared refrigerator space with her sister Marta’s more realistic art. “Most families would have identified [Marta] as the only family artist,” Thoman says, “but luckily, my mother’s natural psychological inclination allowed her to see some unusual potential in me.” Her family nurtured that potential throughout her formative years, and she has always felt that when she creates art, her studio reflects the joy and curiosity she experienced in her childhood playroom.

When she was about to start her senior year of high school, Thoman’s family relocated to Palo Alto, California. After graduation, she began college at the University of California at Davis and quickly discovered the ceramics shop. That was when she discovered that she wanted art to be more than a side pursuit.

“I couldn’t get enough of the environment,” Thoman says, “although I was making sculptural objects that sometimes frustrated my instructors, such as a teapot that had no pouring spout or cup handles that were so thin they were completely non-functional. I’ve been a contrarian throughout my life and, initially, it always surprises people.”

Over the course of her studies, Thoman’s attention shifted from ceramics to drawing and painting, helping her develop a solid grasp of two dimensions as well as three.

After earning her bachelor’s in fine arts degree from UC Berkeley, she sought practical work. “I come from a long line of teachers,” she explains, “and that was the obvious career choice.”

Thoman continued to work in clay in her spare time while teaching art in elementary school for five years, then she entered San Francisco State's fine arts master’s program. She felt like she was back where she belonged and relished the opportunity for further mentorship and growth.

Soon, her professors suggested a move to the painting department, “but at the time, I wasn't interested,” Thoman says. “I wanted to 'paint' on the surfaces of my clay pieces, which began to get flatter and flatter so there was more space to paint! The contrarian in me resisted my teacher’s suggestions.” Eventually, she produced a series of drawings and paintings with attached ceramic intestine-like forms, a precursor to her current mixed media work.

After teaching community college art classes part time for several years, Thoman accepted a full time position at Merritt College and acquired tenure. During her years of teaching, she never abandoned her own artistic path. “Even with less studio time, my artwork continued to thrive because I’d developed the confidence to work through ideas more quickly,” Thoman says.

In fact, it was during her time as a professor that she began to develop the digital art techniques that have become such an essential part of her artistic development.

“Using Photoshop, I make digital collages and print out on my large size 9600 Epson Printer on either paper or canvas,” she explains. “These collaged prints are made from scanning into the computer my own previously photographed artwork and using Photoshop to cut up, reshape, resize, etc. and rearrange bits to make a digital collage. This, then, becomes an under painting ready for my handwork.”

Though she often covers most, if not all, of the under painting with traditional materials, such as oil pastel, graphite, soft pastel, acrylic, or oil paint, Thoman values this step as an important foundation for each piece. It provides her with material to react to, and it creates a layered effect that enhances the colors and textures.

Her interest in digital art has also led to the development of 3D printed sculptures, her evocative “Emerging Venuses” series. These pieces allow her to experiment with creating images in three dimensions in a fresh, new way. She loves being able to twirl shapes around in her computer software and see how her paintings changed as she wraps them onto a digital shape.

As Thoman developed her Emerging Venuses, she also began working with welded steel. At the time, she was recovering from a difficult illness: “While I was recuperating, my mind went to the desire for protection, support and strength. Well aware of the Terracotta Army, life-size sculptures of warriors made around 210 BC to be buried with a Chinese emperor for protection in the afterlife, I thought how wonderful to have an army of guardians for support in this life. I began the “Sentinel Series.”

Thoman’s work has developed in distinct phases over the years, and her recent work has elements that harken back to these phases. As always, ideas about duality or opposing forces in all things dominate her expression.

“I feel extremely lucky to be creative and I require myself to learn from my creativity,” Thoman says, reflecting on her mission as an artist. “While I work abstractly, images from nature quite often hatch out—tree branches, leaves, sometimes petals of flowers or a horizon line and clouds. My work teaches me about my connection to nature. For me, the practical application of duality requires that I live a life that takes into account 'the other' in hope of greater appreciation for and acceptance of diversity and differences among us. Whether any sliver of this seeps into the hearts and minds of my viewers—well, I should be so lucky!”

KIM THOMAN

By Peter Frank, 2012

Kim Thoman has long given graphic form – not simply pictorial body, but detailed, elaborately imagistic concretion – to philosophical and psychological concepts. Thoman is able to do this, especially with the persuasive force she so often musters, because she clearly maintains a visceral grasp of such concepts. They are not abstractions to her, but facts of human existence. And, in turn, the images Thoman creates, while technically “abstract,” do not feel distant or removed from experience; rather, they affect us like apparitions from vivid dreams, or like metamorphic variations on things we have seen – or think we have seen. To be sure, they are expressions of the artist’s inner sensations. But they take on and build upon exterior forms, shapes and even objects we know from ordinary life – or even from extraordinary life.

Having emerged several decades ago as a kind of “comic abstractionist,” manifesting personal, indeed intimate, accounts in a funky cartoon language, Thoman subsequently developed what she identified as a “more universal” formal vocabulary. But in doing so she did not retreat into the reduced, stylized universalities of traditional non-objective art. Rather, she maintained her commitment to a highly charged kind of imagery, one that provides viewers with ready associations in the real world, “natural elements,” as Thoman professes, that symbolize her own personal and intellectual growth. “Perhaps I am simply an autobiographical artist,” she once mused, “documenting the process of my evolution – from the center outward.”

In her most recent series, including the Pod Series and Venus Series, Thoman troubles the notion of “center” upon which she had previously

relied. To be sure, the floral forms and which she had previously naturebased images that have other predominated in her work for years still appear, and even dominate, and they still tend to conform to round, orbital, symmetric shape. But now they are very frequently posited opposite equally intricate but natural-seeming forms who, for all their voluptuous curves, describe non-centric shafts. The duality here is fairly apparent, although Thoman does not belabor it. She does stress the condition of duality itself, however. The evident male/female contrast embodies only one aspect of the dialectical relationships Thoman senses throughout human and natural energy. She contrasts the hard with the soft, the organic with the inorganic, the dark with the light, the smooth with the rough, the vulnerable with the impenetrable, the efflorescent with the withdrawn, the supple with the brittle, the simple with the elaborate, and so forth. Any one of Thoman’s recent works can yield any number of these contrasting states. Indeed, the complexity of the formal relationships set in motion (not simply presented) by Thoman’s elegant and forceful style invites viewer interpretation almost to the point of selfrevelation. If Dr. Rohrschach had devised a dualistic rather than singular format for his method, his forms could well have been the armatures on which Thoman builds her pictures.

As it is, Thoman’s pictures stir something primal in one. They posit dualisms, but they point at unities, as if prompting the eye to synthesize as quickly and thoroughly as possible the opposites before it. Is Thoman simply exploiting the human mind’s – or heart’s – desire for resolution? In fact, she is questioning that very desire, or at least the timidity it engenders. Don’t be afraid to grapple with conflicts, Thoman declares in her dualistic works; the resolution may in fact not lie in making peace between the opposed elements, but in making sense of their difference.

They don’t have to merge, they don’t have to agree, they simply have to

harmonize – and it’s up to your mind, your eye, your heart to find that harmony.

In this regard, Thoman’s Pods and Venuses may not resolve, but they do balance. She employs a range of media to produce these lucid, emphatic pictures, everything from obdurate oils to delicate archival inks, “marrying” the still-new digital technology to the centuries-old technology of panel painting. That in itself determines a dialectical tussle of sorts, a meeting and arguing of modalities originating in markedly different civilizations. But the civilization that gave us painting is the direct ancestor of our own digital culture, and the genes show. Thoman knows this, and demonstrates how the seeming disparity between the two methods works ultimately to the advantage of both. Similarly, the seeming disparity between the charged image on one side of a typical Thoman composition and that on the other side slowly unwinds under continued scrutiny, until the two sides of the equation, once seemingly unequal and described in totally unrelated visual languages, now seem like mirror images of each other.

If we can take away a moral and social lesson from Kim Thoman’s oeuvre, it is that conflict resolution lies within each of us. Thoman does not think of herself as wiser than the rest of us, only more fortunate by dint of her work with art to have discovered for herself the harmony of the universe. That harmony is not in the propitious alignment of forms and meanings, but in our discovery – or, shall we say, acceptance – of balance between haphazard pairings and contrapositions. Things don’t exist in opposition to other things, but only in balance with them. Finally, Thoman doesn’t resolve conflicts, but reveals their superficiality. At heart, everything is in union.

1980s & 1990s

1980’s Painting Series

“Michael and I were hanging the work with the help of a custodian when all of a sudden, down at the end of the hall we heard a loud voice bellow, ‘What is this crap?’”

I’d been invited by the Director of Student Services to hang a series of my 1980s paintings at the California School for Professional Psychology (CSPP). A flap ensued beginning with the Dean’s loud bellowing demand and within days my works were anonymously taken down and turned to face the wall. I was asked to come retrieve my art as the institution felt unable to guarantee that the works would not be damaged.

In 1993, Richard Whittaker, Editor and Publisher of TSA (The Secret Alameda) interviewed me and wrote about the episode in the magazine’s publication #7. With his permission, I’ll quote from the article.

“Kim Thoman, a painter living in Oakland, had decided the time had come to find a place to exhibit a series of paintings she’d done over a three-year period from 1983 to 86. This body of work was deeply personal and she’d been reluctant to exhibit it. The series of paintings had coincided with her entrance into a period of intense psychotherapy and were very much a part of her therapeutic work. Eventually, she felt she’d come to terms with the demons addressed in these paintings and she began to think about exhibiting them…The paintings were installed and a written statement by Thoman was posted with the exhibit that included her comments, ‘I’ve asked myself what I was doing when I painstakingly outlined each of these funny looking figures…My closest answer is that I was doing research. I was, however, both the researcher and the researched.’”

Besides Richard’s insightful article, which he wrote about this unforgettable episode in my art life, I was also interviewed for CSPP’s student newspaper. Unfortunately, although I very much enjoyed the conversation with the student editor, it was never published. However, it was during this interview when I learned that it was possible a group of strong feminist students were the likely source of dissatisfaction over exhibiting my works – even beyond the Dean’s obvious objections. This was a heartache for me to have my work so deeply misunderstood by women with whom I most likely shared much of the same concerns, frustrations and confusion about a women’s place in our culture. Yet, I was astounded at the irony of a training institution for psychologists having such an overreaction to stimulating visual images. Today, I look back at these paintings and am deeply proud of the young artist who dared to paint them and attempted to show them. Now, in my 70s, I am pleased to find the viewing public has a rich curiosity and interest in them.

Artist Statement

In the 1980s, I made a series of paintings with images that exposed my confusion about and struggle to be a powerful female. They are cartoon-like images of mostly armless women with sharp teeth ready to bite. After being hung in a first exhibition they were censured because of multiple threats to destroy them.

I felt shame and was embarrassment. As a consequence, I hid them away for 40 years. Today, I’m thrilled to have them seen and proud of my young self who dared to paint them. They are the artistic embryo that all my work has evolved from.

If my work can persuade another woman that it is the visibility of the female condition that is her power, I should be so lucky.

Teapot & Two Cups, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 74” x 48”, 1980

Tied Legs, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 42” x 48”

Under Pink Chair, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 42” x 48”

Pink Wall, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 42” x 48”

Blue Wall, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 48” x 42”

Yellow Mouth, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 48” x 42”

Door & Dog, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 48” x 42”

Curved Pink Wall, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 60” x 60”

Background Wash, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 60” x 60”

Blue Bird, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 48” x 42”

Black Triangle, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 48” x 42”

Blue Squid, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 48” x 42”

Orange Tongue, Oil & Acrylic on Canvas, 48” x 42”

1990s

This decade was filled with experimentation. While sorting out what I wanted to paint, I was also exploring my painted mark. And, at the same time there were early hints at splitting the canvas and adding 3D elements – all to hatch out in later decades.

I was teaching art at a local community college and my dean asked me and two other art instructors to start up a multimedia department. We looked at each other and said, what’s that?

Joe Doyle and Peter Freund and I dove in.

I discovered two things that stuck. The computer would become for me an essential tool for my creative output for the next 35 years. Printing digital collages on paper or canvas as underpaintings for my handwork, or later as a panel for a diptych or triptych, became part of my working method. Secondly, I found that I wanted to teach only traditional studio art classes.

Both of these came about.

Self-Portrait, Oil on Two Canvases, 52” x 66”, 1990s

Self-Portrait, Oil on Canvas, 48” x 48”, 1990s

Twin Sisters, Oil on Two Canvases, 75” x 42”, 1990s

Exploration in 90s

Retreat Years 1999 - 2014

My first art retreat was to the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, in 1999. The experience working in a different location of the country was a take for me and for the next 14 years, I went every year to either an organized art retreat or I created my own. My rules for a retreat of my own making included a location where I knew at least one person, where there was a good art supply store and, if possible, a nearby college. It’s easy to contact a local gallery, explain I’m an artist from out of town looking for a studio to sublet. The networking takes off. I’ve always had wonderful experiences, made lasting connections and had generous offers. Many of the “Motion Series” were made while I was in Blacksburg, VA, one of my first homemade retreats.

“Motion Series” “Spiral Series”

I never stopped making art while I was teaching; however, my art retreats were in the summers.

I’d purchased a large-scale 9600 Epson printer to make limited edition prints and also to create digital collages as underpaintings.

A large cardboard tube of rolled paper slept in the upper bunk while I mostly traveled by train to and from summer retreats.

"Spiral Series” was begun in Blacksburg, VA, at the Vermont Studio Center and completed on a retreat in Santa Fe, NM.

Motion Series 5, Chalk Pastel on Paper, 30” x 22”, 2001

Motion Series 17, Chalk Pastel on Paper, 50” x 38”, 2002

Motion Series 16, Chalk Pastel on Paper, 50” x 38”, 2002

Motion Series 9, Chalk Pastel on Paper, 50” x 38”, 2001

Motion Series 11, Chalk Pastel on Paper, 50” x 38”, 2001

Motion Series 6, Chalk Pastel on Paper, 50” x 38”, 2001

Motion Series 8, Chalk Pastel on Paper, 50” x 38”, 2001

Motion Series 18, Chalk Pastel on Paper, 47” x 47”, 2002

Caravaggio’s Angel Wing, Chalk Pastel on Paper, 50” x 38”, 2002

Spiral Series 5, Mixed-Media on Paper, 47” x 70”, 2003

Spiral Series 4, Mixed-Media on Paper, 70” x 47”, 2003

Spiral Series 2, Mixed-Media on Paper, 47” x 35”, 2003

Spiral Series 3, Mixed-Media on Paper, 47” x 35”, 2003

“Mother of Pearls Series”

In the summer of 2006, my mother was living in Seattle and wasn’t well. Seattle became my destination for an art retreat and mom became the subject of this series.

“Iris Heart Series”

In 2007, I received a Helene Wurlitzer Residency Grant in Taos, New NM.

These pieces started with parts of the iris in “Motion Series 17”. I used Photoshop to cut, alter and print the altered iris to make an underpainting.

Mother of Pearls 4, Mixed-Media & Oil on Paper, 26” x 39”, 2006

Tangled Witness !2, Oil and Archival Print on Canvas, 47” x 35”

Mother of Pearls 1, Mixed-Media & Oil on Paper, 26” x 39”, 2006

Iris Heart 4, Mixed-Media & Oil on Paper, 47” x 35”, 2007

Iris Heart 2, Mixed-Media & Oil on Paper, 47” x 35”, 2007

“Pod Series”

These emerged from art retreats to Taos over six more summers. Exploration of the computer as an art tool. Shapes can be designed in Cinema 4D software. My paintings are scanned and used to digitally wrap around shapes. I called them pods.

“Venus Series”

Pod shape re-imagined with the Venus of Willendorf in mind. “Venus of Tim” is a memorial piece for a beloved nephew.

“Emerging Venus Series”

After working with 2D computer images of Venus, I was excited to see what they would look like in 3D. After the pod shapes are created in Cinema 4D software and my scanned paintings digitally wrapped around the shapes, I identified a 3D printer that printed in millions of colors. This was necessary so the colors in my paintings (the texture on the Venus shape) printed in fine detail. It wasn’t easy to locate a company owning this type of 3D printer that didn’t require an order of 10,000 instead of 10.

A firm in Colorado that makes architectural models was happy to print for me.

Worked in steel to create a structure to hang the Venus.

Parallel Universe: Spider, Mixed-Media & Oil on Paper, 69” x 40”, 2007

Parallel Universe: Butterfly, Mixed-Media & Oil on Paper, 69” x 59”, 2007

Parallel Universe: Red Spiral, Mixed-Media & Oil on Paper, 44” x 66”, 2007

Parallel Universe: Green Trees, Mixed-Media on Paper, 44” x 66”, 2007

Pod Still Life, Mixed-Media & Oil on Paper, 47” x 35”, 2007

VENUS SERIES – By Peter Frank

Although known as a painter and digital printmaker, Kim Thoman received her MFA degree in ceramic sculpture. Her combination of two and three-dimensional elements in works that comprise the “Venus Series” can be seen as a resolution of Thoman’s twinned impulses to the graphic and the volumetric. And her recent -engagement of 3-D imaging can be regarded as a means of achieving a conceptual and visual continuity between the conditions of painting and drawing and those of sculpture. As Thoman observes, “The electronically created panels are a more intellectual process while I use an intuitive mark-making process on the oil-painted panels.”

The “Venus Series”, which pairs painted vegetal forms with elaborately inscribed symmetrical solids, thus posits a coupling of physically complementary factors – in accordance with Thoman’s philosophy that “duality exists in everything.” In effect, every phenomenon is a balance of opposites, a dialectical resolution of contradictions that reveals hidden harmonies between supposedly antagonistic forces.

As the title of the series indicates, we can regard Thoman’s Venus works as gynocentric in expression, centered on the anima that defines the artist’s own gender. In her diptychs and triptychs, the three-dimensional element is depicted, and in the free-standing sculptures (the “Emerging Venus Series”), the twodimensional element is applied to the surface of the sculptural. The threedimensional element is invariably a curvaceous form, one all human beings would recognize as female. Indeed, it can be considered a direct descendant of the Neolithic Venus of Willendorf, slimmed down, as it were, to fit modern concepts of health and beauty.

But the “Venus Series” contains the masculine as well as the feminine. The series, attests Thoman, “was shaped by the landscape and sky of Taos, New Mexico,” where she spends part of each year. “The Taos Mountains offered a sense of security as the exuberant sky manifested surreal visions that left [me] ungrounded, but responsive to the huge mound of earth rising upwards.” In other words, in Taos Thoman viscerally grasped a synthesis between earth and sky – the original “female-male duality” – that undergirded her concept of the sculpted anima (= earth) and painted animus (= sky).

Venus of Turner, Archival Print and Oil on Canvases, 46” x 74”, 2011

Angel Venus 4, Archival Print and Oil on Canvases, 46” x 74”, 2011

Venus of Men 1, Archival Print & Oil on Canvases, 42” x 48”, 2011

Angel Venus 3, Oil & Archival Print on Canvases, 73” x 30”

Venus of Black Crow, Archival Print & Oil on Canvases, 42” x 66”, 2010

Venus of Taos 1, Archival Print & Oil on Canvases, 42” x 66”, 2010

My My painting scanned into Cinema 4D, ready to be digitally wrapped around Venus shape.

3D Printer has print heads similar to a 2D inkjet printer.

3D printing process on a 860 Project printer made by 3D Systems. The surface texture (my paintings) come out on the printed piece.

Continuation of 3D printing process.

Arrives from printer wrapped like a baby.

Journal Drawings

Emerging Venus 6, Powder Coated Steel & 3D Print, 31” x 30” x 17”, 2013

Emerging Venus 3 , Powder Coated Steel & 3D Print, 31” x 30” x 17”, 2013

Emerging Venus 2 , Powder Coated Steel, 3D Print & Acrylic, 31” x 30” x 17”, 2013

Emerging Venus 7: Bird , Powder Coated Steel & 3D Print, 31” x 30” x 17”, 2013

Emerging Venus 1 , Powder Coated Steel & 3D Print, 31” x 30” x 17”, 2013

Emerging Venus 4 , Powder Coated Steel & 3D Print, 31” x 30” x 17”, 2013

“Gray Matters Series”

The wild loincloths seen in Crucifixion images of the 1500’s, such as a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, captured my attention.

GRAY MATTERS – Peter Frank

The “Gray Matters” series, dating back several years, presents Thoman’s concept of duality in the most literal terms, splitting the picture down the middle and setting the image in each left segment against that in each right segment. In each painting the images arranged left and right are notably similar to each other, inferring that the oppositions we see in the world are actually between like forces. We can extend that to the observation that our supposed “enemies,” the other people in the world against whom we think we compete, are in fact our equals and our allies.

The real enemy, you could say, is not the force that mirrors us, but the force that divides us – here embodied in the recessed panel at center. Thoman has designed this divisive element as a kind of crucifix, itself echoing the human body, especially if the painted angles atop each pair of panels can be read as embracing arms or wings. In this regard, then, even the element that separates us seeks to bring us back together, to enfold us all in a peaceful embrace. Thoman also regards the “arms” as proposing a “metaphor for the duality of human versus… divine.”

“Gray matter” refers not only to the predominance in this series of the “color” gray (which, as Thoman notes, is made by combining opposites on the color wheel), but, of course, to the human brain. That organ, source of our reasoning and our passions, our fear and our love, is itself formed as a duality. The images Thoman splays on either side of each gray recessed vertical do not closely resemble human brains. But they approximate our brain’s incessant churn of activity, the process of perception, analysis, and creativity that makes all of us, women and men alike, uniquely human.

Gray Matters 1, Oil on Canvas and Recessed Wood Panel, 37” x 40”

Gray Matters 2 , Oil on Canvas and Recessed Wood Panel, 44” x 59”

Gray Matters 3 , Oil on Canvas and Recessed Wood Panel, 40” x 59”

Gray Matters 5 , Oil on Canvas and Recessed Wood Panel, 39” x 51”

Gray Matters 4 , Oil on Canvas and Recessed Wood Panel, 34” x 53”

Illness, Recovery, Steel & Dream Studio 2014 - 2019

“Shortstop Revisited Series”

John Chamberlain’s crushed sculptures made from parts of cars are a huge influence.

I downloaded pictures of Chamberlain’s sculptures from the Internet, altered them in Photoshop and used them to create digital underpaintings for works on paper.

“Nesting Series”

Shortstop, sculpture by John Chamberlain, crushed car parts, 1957.

Background, dripped acrylic paint, turned sideways.

Shortstop Revisited 5, Mixed-Media on Paper, 37” x 31”

Shortstop Revisited 3, Mixed-Media on Paper, 37” x 31”

Shortstop Revisited 1, Mixed-Media on Paper, 37” x 31”

Shortstop Tangle 16, Mixed-Media on Paper, 23” x 19”

Shortstop Tangle 11, Mixed-Media on Paper, 23” x 19”

Shortstop Tangle 19, Mixed-Media on Paper, 23” x 19”

Shortstop Tangle 17, Mixed-Media on Paper, 23” X 19”

Shortstop Tangle 18, Mixed-Media on Paper, 23” X 19”

Shortstop Tangle 15, Mixed-Media on Paper, 23” X 19”

Shortstop Tangle 14, Mixed-Media on Paper, 23” x 19”

Shortstop Tangle 2, Mixed-Media on Paper, 23” x 19”

Nesting 1, Mixed-Media on Paper, 31” x 37”

Nesting 4, Mixed-Media on Paper, 31” x 37”

Nesting 2, Mixed-Media on Paper, 31” x 37”

Nesting 5, Mixed-Media on Paper, 31” x 37”

“Sentinel Series”

While I was going through chemo, I recalled the terracotta warriors, life-size clay figures made for the Chinese Emperor in 200 BC to take with him for protection in the afterlife.

I began the “Sentinels for Health” - body guards as protectors during life. Who doesn’t need a personal “army” to guard our health?

“Entanglement Series”

Sometimes the steel comes first and sometimes the painting is first.

Xi’an City of Shaanxi Province, China

Sentinel 3, Oil on Canvas & Welded Steel, 76” x 43” x 13”

Sentinel 6, Oil & Archival Print on Canvas & Welded Steel, 76” x 50” x 10”

Sentinel 7, Oil & Archival Print on Canvas & Welded Steel, 74” x 60” x 10”

Sentinel 6, Oil & Archival Print on Canvas & Welded Steel, 80” x 35” x 13”

Sentinel 10, Oil & Archival Print & Welded Steel, 85” x 35” x 13”

Sentinel 9, Oil on Canvas & Welded Steel, 84” x 40” x 13”

Sentinel 11, Oil & Archival Print on Canvas & Welded Steel, 85” x 42” x 13”

ENTANGLEMENTS – By Peter Frank

In particle physics, “entanglements” are interrelations between two widely separated particles – particles whose great distance from one another, in fact, would make such interrelations impossible in the finite universe postulated by Albert Einstein. A dubious Einstein referred to such entanglements, long postulated by quantum physicists, as “spooky actions at a distance.” But they were definitively proven by experiments conducted as late as last year. The idea that such a metaphorical, even poetic, condition could exist in the physical world strongly appeals to Thoman, who has devised a series of works combining two and three-dimensional elements under this rubric.

The Entanglements literalize the sense of the “tangled” while embodying the “spooky action at a distance,” creating a kind of push-and-pull between forms and gestures. The looping lines that comprise both the painted elements and the sculpted seem the very essence of “entanglement.” But it is a very coherent kind of tangle, one in which the painted line segues effortlessly into the sculpted, almost as if a sculptor’s drawings were turning into sculpture by themselves. The painted part of each “Entanglement” roils and fulminates on canvas, confined by the limits of the picture plane, but then seems to break free and fly into the air – like a photon hurtling away from its twin while retaining all the same characteristics, if embodied differently. Thoman’s formulations even include a subtle mirroring of on-canvas compositions by the “twinned” sculptural factors.

The “Tangled Witness Unseen” series manifests the concept of entanglement somewhat differently. Here, the painted and drawn elements, evincing the physicality of Thoman’s hand, find their contrasting doppelgänger not in threedimensional forms but in the hard, mechanical scumble of computergenerated lines. Thoman tucks these brittle black loops and meshes behind the quasi-floral, but also highly linear, images she paints and draws. She regards this contrast as giving form to another kind of metaphor, not physical or scientific so much as social and humanistic. As she writes, “Our brain has the ability to both remember and forget, creating a balancing act. I call this the tangled web of seeing.”

Entanglement 9, Oil on Canvas & Welded Steel, 60” x 48” x 10”

Entanglement 7, Oil on Canvas & Welded Steel, 72” x 60” x 10”

Entanglement 8, Oil on Canvas & Welded Steel, 66” x 66” x 10”

Entanglement 3, Oil on Canvas & Welded Steel, 60” x 40” x 10”

Entanglement 6, Oil on Canvas & Welded Steel, 72” x 60” x 10”

Entanglement 4, Oil on Canvas & Welded Steel, 45” x 55” x 10”

Entanglement 1, Oil on Canvas & Welded Steel, 35” x 50” x 10”

“Love From Afar Series”

Love From Afar 21, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 43” x 29” x 13”

Love From Afar 2, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 42” x 40 ” x 13”

Love From Afar 13, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 43” x 14” x 13”

Love From Afar 15, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 43” x 53” x 6”

Love From Afar 25, Powder Coated Steel & Archival Print, 43” x 30 ” x 14”

Love From Afar 16, Powder Coated Steel & Archival Print, 43” x 53 ” x 6”

Love From Afar 17, Powder Coated Steel & Archival Print, 43” x 27 ” x 14”

Love From Afar 11, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 43” x 53 ” x 6”

Love From Afar 26, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 43” x 53 ” x 10”

Love From Afar 22, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 27” x 22”x 13”

Love From Afar 9, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 27” x 23”x 13”

Love From Afar 24, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 24” x 19”x 13”

Love From Afar 23, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 20” x 16”x 11”

Touching Ground 1, Powder coated steel & Oil, 22” x 7” x 7”

Touching Ground 2, Powder Coated Steel & Oil, 20” x 28” x 15”

COVID & Beyond…

“Grill Revisited Series”

Slowly opening up from two years of COVID lockdown. I found a neon-orange liquid paint, unused, in my studio. Seemed the perfect metaphor for beginning to blossom.

“Gist Of It Series”

Folds are never far from my work.

Fully reworked canvases. After COVID, a gestural mark hatched out.

“Revisitation Series”

Grill Revisited 11, Mixed-Media on Paper, 17” x 14”

Grill Revisited 6, Mixed-Media on Paper, 17” x 14”

Grill Revisited 5, Mixed-Media on Paper, 17” x 14”

Grill Revisited 8, Mixed-Media on Paper, 17” x 14”

Grill Revisited 2, Mixed-Media on Paper, 17” x 14”

Grill Revisited 9, Mixed-Media on Paper, 17” x 14”

Grill Revisited 10, Mixed-Media on Paper, 17” x 14”

Revisitation 6, Oil on Board, 30” x 30”

Revisitation 9, Oil on Canvas, 36” x 30”

Revisitation 8, Oil on Canvas, 30” X 38”

Revisitation 7, Oil on Canvas, 30” X 38”

Revisitation 5, Oil on Canvas, 36” x 30”

Revisitation 4, Oil on Canvas, 36” x 30”

Gist Of It 1, Mixed-Media on Canvas, 30” x 29”

Gist Of It 2, Mixed-Media on Canvas, 30” x 30”

Gist Of It 3, Mixed-Media on Canvas, 36” x 30”

Gist Of It 4, Mixed-Media on Canvas, 44” x 60”

“One-Wing Angel Series”

A “body” between two paintings. An image I’d had about 35 years ago but was unable to bring forth until now. More of these to come.

Journal Drawings

Journal Drawings

One-Wing Angel 1, Powder Coated Steel & Archival Print, 69” x 66” x 10”

One-Wing Angel 3, Powder Coated Steel & Archival Print, 69” x 66” x 10”

One-Wing Angel 2, Powder Coated Steel & Archival Print, 84” x 66” x 10”

One-Wing Angel 4, Powder Coated Steel & Oil on Canvases, 73” x 66” x 10”

Wrestling by nature, te best is yet t come…

A word of gratitude for the many many art students I worked with over the years. They taught me how to teach. I was thrilled by their unique creative expressions while I hammered home the magic of composition.

A Visual Journey of Forty Years

By Jan Wurm

Moving through time, through the days and years and decades of long and fertile growth, Kim Thoman has led an art practice yielding vibrant images and shape-shifting forms.

To see her earliest paintings alongside her mature graphic work is to witness the seeds of an evolution. Already in her images of graphic figures grappling with womanhood, there is a centrifugal force whirling in a field both reductive and exuberantly patterned. It is that insistent mark that delineates, re-enforces, and then again, reasserts itself.

For a while Thoman suppressed the mark in service to a unified narrative, though it still found a way to persist with its energies lashing the surface.

This mark rebounded like a coiled spring.

With this propulsive force, the mark took on a physical presence asserting all the power and strength of the arm, the entire body. Though the hand of the artist can be recognized and noted just as the voice, in the work of Kim Thoman it is the whole artist stepping into the work. The length of the stroke, the speed of the directional shift, and the layering repetition – all of these echo the physicality of the artist’s practice.

The primacy of line in the mature work remains unchallenged: unchallenged by color, unchallenged by form, and unchallenged by texture. This is not to say that these fundamental elements do not occupy the artist – they certainly do and visibly animate the artwork. Still, whether painted or drawn or collaged, the line is the beating heart of the artwork.

A reductive palette of black and grey tones allows the pointed pinks – flesh, mauve, ruby, peach – to keep the human alive yet locked away. Cloaked or covered, persistently peeking through, the origins of these visual journeys root the image to its genesis. In filigree, the activated surface carries an agitation that never detaches, that always summons and reconnects with the inner life.

Even as Thoman takes metal to task – through all the twists and turns the line still dominates to hold, contain, direct, and demand. There is a demand to look, come close, but not too close. The hard and cold structure extends, leaps, and taunts us with the promise of the soft and voluptuous just beyond.

It is the sensuality of the work that is never diminished by time or shifts in media. With each material and venture, there is a sensuality that vibrates with the energy of the line, the undulation of the waving fold, the seductive promise of the beckoning color – all conspire to entrance.

Kim Thoman has pulled her image in every direction. She has probed her forms through space. She has pushed her materials into conflict and resolution. Each piece at hand has been lived: recording a search, a meditation, a dance, a simple assertion of the present to stand upon the ground of the past and to summon the spirit of the next.

Throughout these changing seasons the work stands as witness to an ever-unfolding metamorphoses of kaleidoscopic vision. - Jan Wurm 2023

Afterword

In the 1970s, when Kim Thoman, a ceramics student sitting in an art history class, saw splashed upon the screen a slide of a Crucifix painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, Kim said her immediate thought was how interesting. But I think the 16th century painting was more than just interesting to Kim; that the image touched Kim in a much deeper, intuitive level. Kim focused on the central figure, Christ on the cross with his loin cloth unfolding, flowing in the unseen wind. Kim said a question popped into her head. Why? Why was the drapery unfurled like that? It wasn’t natural, it wasn’t normal.

If all of Kim’s paintings were laid side by side in chronological order, with one painting leading to the next, the continuity of her quest to answer the question provoked by Lucas Cranach the Elder would be laid bare. As Kim explored and tried to resolve her concern with duality, Cranach’s hidden influence would manifest itself, symbolically, growing stronger, changing form, sometimes almost obliterated, but always there, finally reaching a complete transformation in her One-Wing Angel Series.

May of 2023, Kim Thoman and I sat in her studio, discussing the drafts of her catalog. We would burst into laughter every time I pointed out the often obscured or hidden drapery in her pieces. We had known each other for about 40 years, meeting in the 1980s when we both had live-work spaces in the Glascock Building near the Oakland Estuary. Seeing the Cranach image for the first time in the catalog, a whole new way of viewing Kim’s work hit me. I could write pages explaining my new awareness – the connection between two artists 500-years apart, the forces that drove them, but I think it is more exciting for viewers to reach their own conclusions. And so, I invite you to again wander through Kim’s catalog and view her work through the lens of Lucas Cranach the Elder.

By Mary Pacios, 2023

KIM THOMAN

Born 1949, Lincoln, Nebraska

Studio: Emeryville, California

EDUCATION

University of California, Davis, California, 1966-68. University of California, Berkeley, California, BA, 1972. San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California, MA, 1979.

GRANTS & AWARDS

The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Residency Grant, Taos, New Mexico, 2007. Vermont Studio Center Residency, Johnson, Vermont, 2003, 2000, 1999. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Change Grant, New York, New York, 1993.

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2023 Secret Orders From the Heart, 4-Women, Richmond Art Center, California.

2019 Gallery at 48 Natoma, Folsom, California.

Natural Dualities, Hardin Center for the Arts, Gadsden, Alabama.

Hidden Prints in Motion, San Pablo Art Gallery, San Pablo, California.

2018 Equilibrium, Olive Hyde Art Gallery, Fremont, California.

Natural Dualities, Goddard Center for Visual Arts, Ardmore, Oklahoma.

2016 Natural Dualities, Peninsula Museum of Art, Burlingame, California.

2015 The Mendocino Art Center, Mendocino, California.

Natural Dualities, Anderson Center for the Arts, Anderson, Indiana.

Natural Dualities, Lillian Davis Hogan Galleries, Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota, Winona, Minnesota.

2013 Shadravan Gallery, Oakland, California.

2010 Monterey Peninsula College Art Gallery, Monterey, California.

2009 “W” Hotel Gallery, San Francisco, California.

2008 SFMOMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco, California. Oakopolis Gallery, Oakland, California.

2006 California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, California.

2005

Stanford Art Spaces, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California.

Dream Institute of Northern California, Berkeley, California.

2003 Perspective Gallery, Virginia Tech University, Blacksburg, Virginia.

1998 Quantum Corporation, Milpitas, California.

1997 Gallery of the Center for Psychological Studies, Albany, California.

1994

1993

1992

JFK University Art Gallery, Orinda, California.

Jung Institute of San Francisco, San Francisco, California. California School for Professional Psychology, Alameda, California.

Graham & James Law Offices, San Francisco, California.

1991 Bank of America World Headquarters, San Francisco, California.

1990 SFMOMA Artists Gallery, San Francisco, California.

1987 Djurovich Gallery, Sacramento, California.

1985 Monterey Peninsula Museum, Monterey, California.

1983

Chabot College Art Gallery, Oakland, California.

1982 Berkeley Stage Theater, Berkeley, California.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2022 Fresh Coffee and a Fresh Start, Grand Theater for Arts, Tracy, California.

2021

All About Women, Marin Society of Arts, Online Exhibition.

A Digital Art Salon, San Luis Obispo Museum, San Luis Obispo, California. ConVERGEnce, Marin Museum of Art, Novato, California.

35th Emeryville Celebration of the Arts, Emeryville, California. Inspirational Art in Mixed Media, The Healing Power of Art & Artists.

2020

Rhythmix Cultural Works K Gallery, Alameda, California.

The Spirit of Resilience, The Healing Power of Art, NY, NY. Award.

2019 34th Emeryville Celebration of the Arts, Emeryville, California.

2018

The Breakfast Group: Liberty Arts Gallery, Yreka, California.

Generation, UC Berkeley Art Alumni Exhibition, Berkeley, California.

Out of Darkness, Light, Santa Clara Exhibition, Santa Clara, California.

2017 A Sculpture Exhibition, Marin Society of Artists, San Rafael, California.

Guilty Pleasures, Jen Tough Gallery, Vallejo, California.

2016 Printmaking Explored, San Pablo Art Gallery, San Pablo, California.

One Plus One, Gray Loft Gallery, Oakland, California.

Digital Fabrication Exhibit, Florida State College, Jacksonville, Florida.

2015

2014

International Digital Sculpture Exhibition, Sarofim Fine Arts Gallery, Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas.

Adell McMillan Gallery, University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon.

25TH Annual International Solid Freeform Fabrication Symposium ,

Etter-Harbin Alumni Center at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas.

Real/Surreal, Sandra Lee Gallery, San Francisco, California.

Return of the Thing: Artists & 3D Printing, CCC Gallery, San Pablo, California.

The Breakfast Group, Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California.

2013

Cherry Center for the Arts, Carmel, California. Uplift, Oakopolis Gallery, Oakland, California

2005 Dayle Dunn Gallery, Half Moon Bay, California.

U.C. Berkeley Art Alumni Show, Berkeley, California. Art Concepts Gallery, Walnut Creek, California. Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, California.

Outnumbered: Works On Paper, Jackrabbit Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

2002

Reflections, San Pablo Arts Gallery, San Pablo, California.

Contemporary Abstracts, Artisans Gallery, Mill Valley, California. Maxtor Corporation, San Jose, California.

2001 Aspect Communications, San Jose, California. 3Com Corporation, Santa Clara, California.

2000 Synopsys Incorporated, Mountain View, California.

1998

1997

1996

Womanscape: Body, Land, Ocean, Urban, Sun Gallery, Hayward, California.

Breakthrough Color, Editions Limited Gallery, Indianapolis, Indiana. Spirit of Nature, Diablo Valley College, Pleasant Hill, California.

Ahead of the Wave, Iris Arts, Berkeley, California. Zipzap, Online Magazine, http://www.dnai.com/~zipzap.

Significants, Los Medanos College, Pittsburg, California.

ADA: Women and Info Technology, Artemisia Gallery, Chicago, Illinois.

1995 The World’s Women On-Line, United Nation 4th World Conference on

Women, Beijing, China.

Bayfront Gallery, San Francisco, California.

1994 Joanne Chappell Gallery, San Francisco, California.

1993

Pro Arts Gallery, Annual, Oakland, California.

1991 3Com Corporation, Santa Clara, California.

1988

Los Medanos College Art Gallery, Pittsburg, California. Pacific Grove Art Center, Pacific Grove, California. Gallery 44, Oakland, California.

1987 Pro Arts Gallery, Oakland, California (catalogue). Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, California.

1986 San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, San Francisco, California.

1984

Lawson Gallery, San Francisco, California.

Ralph L. Wilson Gallery, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, California.

South of Market Cultural Center, San Francisco, California.

1983

Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California.

Walnut Creek Civic Arts Gallery, Walnut Creek, California.

Holy Names College Art Gallery, Oakland, California.

1982

Coos Art Museum, Coos Bay, Oregon.

Creative Growth Gallery, Oakland, California.

1980

Contemporary Artisans Gallery, San Francisco, California.

34th Annual San Francisco Arts Festival, San Francisco, California.

1979 33rd Annual San Francisco Arts Festival, San Francisco, California.

1978

Ligoa Duncan Gallery, New York, New York.

1977 Richmond Art Center, Richmond, California

OTHER ART RELATED EMPLOYMENT

Juror: “RISE”, Cal State East Bay Art Gallery, Student Show, Hayward, CA, 2018

Curator: “Ruth and Me”, Eddie Rhodes Gallery, CCC Gallery, San Pablo, CA, 2017.

Juror: Mendocino Art Center Membership Juried Exhibition, Mendocino, CA, 2016.

Curator: The Thing: Artists Use 3D Printing, CCC Gallery, San Pablo, CA, 2014.

Juror: Oakland Art Association Exhibition, Oakland, CA, 2010.

Slide Lecture: “Sustaining A Creative Life” Rotary Club, Oakland, CA, 2010.

Slide Lecture: California Institute for Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA, 2006.

Juror: Print and Video Festival, Berkeley City College, Berkeley, CA, 2005.

Juror: Los Medanos Student Art Show, 2000, Los Medanos Gallery, Pittsburg, CA, 2000.

Juror: Los Medanos Student Art Show, 1999, Los Medanos Gallery, Pittsburg, CA, 1999.

Juror: Printmaking: People and Process, California Society of Printmakers, CA, 1997.

Faculty Advisor: Milvia Street Art Magazine, Berkeley City College, CA, 1995-97.

Juror: Ohlone College Art Student League Competition, Fremont, CA, 1995.

Slide Lecture: Berkeley Art Center, Berkeley, CA, 1994.

Slide Lecture: JFK University, Orinda, CA, 1994.

Contributing Writer: Art In Focus, High School Textbook, Glencoe Publishing, CA, 1992.

Contributing Writer: Exploring Art, Jr. High Textbook, Glencoe Publishing, CA, 1990.

Art Department Chair, Berkeley City College, Berkeley, CA, 1990-92.

Juror: 1985 Army Artist Contest, Presidio Army Base, San Francisco, CA, 1985.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Daily Journal, “Natural Duality” by Susan Cohn, July 29, 2016.

Mendocino Arts Magazine, 2015-16, by Michael Potts.

3DPrint.com, What Things May Come: 3D Printing, by M. Matisons, February, 2015.

3DPrint.com, Kim Thoman’s 3D Printed Sculptures, by M. Matisons, January, 23, 2015.

East Bay Express, Oakland, California, February 2008, Drastic Park by DeWitt Cheng.

Tempo, Taos News, Taos, New Mexico, October 2007, Total Arts Gallery Review.

Palo Alto Weekly, Palo Alto, California, August 2005, Art: Stanford Art Spaces.

Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, August 2005, Art on Paper by Monique Beeler. The Forum, California Community Colleges Publication, Sacramento, California, 1997. TSA, Alameda, California, October 1993, Unlikely Collision: Art at CSPP by R. Whittaker.

Pacific Grove Monarch, California, October 1988, Art Notes by S. Colburn.

Contra Costa Times, California, May 1988, Los Medanos, by Bonnie Ferguson.

San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco, California, January 1987, by Al Morch.

Oakland Tribune, California, December 1983, Art Show Runs the Gamut, by C. Shere.

Oakland Tribune, California, August 1983, Crowded Talented Show, by C. Shere.

Contra Costa Times, California, August 1983, Walnut Creek Exhibit, by Carol Fowler.

Website: www.kimthoman.com

Instagram: Kim.thoman