Artist of the Month :       Peter Thomson

                                                  by Gregory Goddard, collector, film maker and writer.    

                                                           ‘Fragments’ 18 x 24 cms oil/panel  2008

   Something is happening here …...

  Your reaction on seeing a Peter Thomson for the first time may be one of many things: his paintings are undoubtedly eye-catching

  and cleverly executed. But sooner or later one question will come to dominate your mind: what is going on here?

  His work leads you irresistibly into world of mystery, a sort of half-familiar universe governed by unknown rules and unfathomable

  traditions. His images tell stories which are at one level easy to understand — some sort of show is going on; a man is doing something  

  with a picture; a crowd waits in anticipation in art gallery — but leave you full of questions. What has happened to the man with the 

  painting; is that self-portrait helping him or hurting him?

                                                          ‘The Arch Narcissist’ 26 x 23 cms oil/panel  2011

   Why are the paintings in the gallery falling out of their frames and what does the crowd expect the viewer to do about it? What is

   so fascinating about spitting paint and why is that man on the left the only one who is not interested. Once you start thinking like

   this you are hooked.
   But there is more to Peter’s work than simple fantasy. The world he shows us is like a distorted reflection of our own. It highlights   

   previously unnoticed aspects of experience: some unappreciated element of magic, perhaps, or a dimly remembered sense of loss. 
                          
                                                  

                                                                   ‘Anticipation’ 48 x 90 cms   oil/panel  2011

  For example, I defy anyone who knows his work to sit in the audience at the Albert Hall, with its plush red décor, gold trimmings

  and curtained boxes, and not be struck, as if for the first time, by the essential strangeness of the ritual in which they are taking

  part. Thomson’s work has subtly uncovered a (not altogether displeasing) eerie enchantment inherent in something that time has

  made almost commonplace. That, in a nutshell, is why I collect Peter Thomsons: they make my world more interesting.

                                                                 ‘Cabaret’  82 x 120 cms oil/panel 2007

                                                        ‘Return of the Fauves’ 88 x 122 cms oil/panel 2011.