Donald Roy Thompson
The Illusive Dimension of Color September 7 - October 2, 2018
Donald Roy Thompson was born in 1936, in Fowler, California. He received his B.A. degree from Sacramento State University in 1960. He received his M.A also from Sacramento State University in 1962. His most notable art instructor was Wayne Thiebaud. Among his classmates were Fritz Scholder and Merrill Mahaffey, both successful artists in Santa Fe. From 1964-2000 Donald was an art instructor at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. Before he settled down to teach, Donald traveled and lived in Mexico City, where he was able to observe closely the murals of Diego Rivera. In 2013 Thompson settled in Santa Fe. There he began his current series of work, rekindling an aesthetic from four decades previous. Like so many color field painters of his generation, Thompson was influenced by Johannes Itten and Josef Albers, as well as by Matisse and Mondrian. During an impoverished time in his early art career he was unable to afford good quality paint so instead he used layers of hand dyed cheesecloth for a large installation at the Cabrillo College Gallery. It helped form the basis of the ideas of transparency that he later produced in his acrylic color field paintings of 1971-75. By 1972 Donald began again to use opaque colors on various sizes of canvas, focusing on the illusion of transparency. By 1974 he began to feel the need for greater physicality. He began to employ the use of stretched canvases of a single color bolted together from large to huge (7.5’ X 10’) now in the Oakland Museum. Thompson has exhibited solo and group shows both nationally and internationally. These include solo shows at Larry Evans/Willis Gallery, Foster Goldstrom, and Galeria Carl Van der Voort in San Francisco, and Ibiza, Spain. He had solo shows at Frederick Spratt Gallery in San Jose, California, as well as Shasta College Gallery, in Redding California and Cabrillo College in Aptos, California. His group shows include Leila Taghinia-Milani, New York City, Basel Art Fair, Switzerland, Second British International Print Biennale, Yorkshire, England, and "40 Now California Painters," an invitational show that toured the Southeast. Thompson’s Paintings are found in major collections including The Oakland Museum, Oakland, CA.; Seattle First National Bank (Seafirst), Seattle, WA; Crocker Museum, Sacramento, CA, Art Museum of Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz, CA. Donald Thompson’s exhibitions have been reviewed well by Thomas Albright of the San Francisco Chronicle, July 28, 1964, Sept. 28, 1967; Henry Hopkins, The Tampa Tribune, April, 16, 1968; Mark Levy, Artweek, December 18, 1982; Claude LeSuer, ArtSpeak, June 23, 1983, New York, N.Y.
SalomĂŠ
17 June 2017 Acrylic on canvas 52 x 32 inches
Wayne
10 November 2015 Acrylic on canvas 19 x 16 inches
Water
18 April 2014 Acrylic on canvas 18 x 19 1/4 inches
North
11 January 2015 Acrylic on canvas 21 1/2 x 20 inches
SFO
15 April 2014 Acrylic on canvas 18 x 21 inches
Chama
29 January 2016 Acrylic on canvas 22 x 19 inches
Katerina
4 November 2015 Acrylic on canvas 21 1/2 x 20 inches
Northwest
22 December 2015 Acrylic on canvas 24 x 24 inches
Beans
19 March 2015 Acrylic on canvas 24 x 24 inches
Venezia
30 December 2015 Acrylic on canvas 24 x 24 inches
Flame
6 November 2015 Acrylic on canvas 27 x 20 inches
Fogster
10 January 2015 Acrylic on canvas 28 x 20 inches
Stairs
5 March 2016 Acrylic on canvas 29 x 18 inches
Nocturne
15 March 2017 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 36 inches
Screamer 29 June 2015
Acrylic on canvas 52 x 36 inches
Sangre de Toro 11 June 2017
Acrylic on canvas 52 x 36 inches
Salal
31 March 2016 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 36 inches
Harvest
8 June 2016 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 36 inches
Tiptoe
11 May 2015 Acrylic on canvas 50 x 36 inches
Cipres 140
2 October 2017 Acrylic on canvas 72 x 42 inches
Fire on Ice 21 July 2017
Acrylic on canvas 69 x 42 inches
Rincon
10 January 2018 Acrylic on canvas 69 x 48 inches
Eureka
15 April 2018 Acrylic on canvas 66 x 60 inches
Splash Variation 3 2018
Acrylic on paper 24 x 18 inches
California Calling 2018
Acrylic on paper 24 x 14 inches
Valencia Variation 2 2018
Acrylic on paper 16 x 12 inches