Esmé Thompson’s new paintings continue her involvement with pattern, this time interlacing overall design with the silhouette of a women’s head. The profiled figure in each painting is part of a delightfully elaborate network of drawing derived from a wide range of sources, both man-made and natural. Thompson’s inspiration includes medieval illuminated manuscripts, textiles found in Renaissance paintings, Italian ceramics, and patterns found in nature, for example, the honeycomb of a beehive. As in many cultures where ornament plays a central role, Thompson’s figures are often “buried” in the overall pattern. In this work the silhouette creates a “logic in which the subject of representation is at once absent yet present, schematized yet utterly recognizable, neither fully visualized nor materialized, nonetheless legible (Lisa Saltzman, Making Memory Matter, page 53). This ambiguity allows fluidity in the painting space. Thompson says, “My paintings are about the process of visual discovery demonstrating how memory can play a part in the way an image is revealed, not as in a single iconic shape, but through recognition and reconnection of pattern and form. The repeated images create a cyclical and cumulative, rather than linear, reading.”

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December, 2008 - New paintings and drawings; added collages and links pages.

• Hood Museum of Art, one person exhibition, Hanover, NH, 2011
• Strauss Gallery, Hopkins Center, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, March 2010
• Bowery Gallery, one person show, New York City, NY, December 2008
  530 West 25th St.
  4th Floor
  NY NY 10011
  646-230-6655
  Map | Esmé's gallery page