Thomas Darnell's Fascination with the Principles of Energy and Matter

Artist’s Biography:

Thomas Darnell was born in San Antonio, Texas on February 2, 1958. He grew up in the surrounding hill country. His primary interests at school were art and science, which culminated with a degree in fine arts from the University of Texas, Austin in 1981.

In that same year Thomas married his first wife Cheryl Parsons (a writer and poet). She passed away in 1990. Two years later Darnell moved to Paris, France to start a new life and to focus full-time on his painting.

In 1993 he married Nicole Dufour (a public school teacher) who gave birth to their first child, Joseph Lucien in 1996 and their second, Ava Marie in 1998. The Darnell's currently live in a small village in southern France.

Starting with his first solo show in 1993 at the Foster Peet Gallery in New York City, Darnell has continued to exhibit his work internationally, including solo exhibitions in: Madrid, Paris, London, Atlanta, Barcelona, Hong Kong, Milan and elsewhere.

Institutional Collection: Coca Cola, Nicholls Wilson

Artist’s Statement:

Thomas Darnell's work fall into two categories: abstraction and realism. The abstractions are based on Thomas' personal experiences and spiritual musings, an internal desire to find meaning and order. Inspiration for these images comes from occurrences visible and invisible: swirling water or smoke, light and electrical events in the cosmos, biological events on a microscopic or particle level, as well as the phenomenon of energy becoming matter and returning back to energy. In contrast, the representational paintings of flowers, landscapes and still lives represent the artist's external world; a visual diary of his actual physical environment .

In spite of the broad range of style and subject, there exists a unified aesthetic. Whether Darnell's attempts to capture radiant light, random movement and spatial dimensions appear as a hyper-detailed canvas of roses or an abstract, his paintings maintain a consistent mysterious, serene and peaceful quality.

Although his paintings cover a broad range of subjects from photo realistic landscapes, flowers and still life to abstract images of light and movement; they are unified by a consistent contemplative or vaguely spiritual feel. They also have a timeless quality, depending on their setting, they can look either very old or contemporary. Thomas achieves a luminosity through applying multiple layers of transparent oil paint on canvas.

"The paintings start out as a blurry image and gradually, with each layer, I add more detail and contrast until they 'feel' finished. Sometimes the final piece is very detailed and in focus and other times I leave the image a bit blurred and dreamlike. On a conceptual level, I am interested in the principal that matter cannot be created nor destroyed, it changes form. Spirits, souls, energies (or whatever you want to call it) manifest physically and eventually dissolve back again into their origin: the infinite space that contains all form."