Fara Thomas

Sweetgum- Mixed media resin wood wall sculpture, yellow, green, teal, pink

ara Thomas, an Iranian American artist whose work is concerned with color, texture, and reflection, invites the viewer to explore beauty and challenge boundaries. Color as a form of energy which stimulates our perceptual processes is vital in conveying emotions, is her first point of impact. Depth, texture, and reflective surfaces are the subtleties which are experienced upon further observation. The smooth reflective surfaces and the translucent color layers of her paintings invite viewers to travel constantly through the image from one imaginary space to another. The successive translucent layers open a third dimension that enables viewers to see deeper into the painting, which seems imaginary at first glance. Thomas’ paintings are a summation of many layers of handmade pigments from semi-precious stones to organic dyes, suspended in epoxy resin on wood panels. Thomas’s large-scale abstract pieces present an infinite depth that blends the foreground and background seamlessly. Thomas is interested in creating complex compositions out of elements that overlap each other, through a variety of planes which make the viewer’s eye constantly travel through the image, moving from one imaginary space to the other. Built upon each other, layers can be perceived as autonomous abstractions, or dependent elements which create new and convoluted images. Thomas has long worked with the intrinsic relationship between color and light to produce optically charged works that challenge our perception of space and color. Her paintings interact with the space in which they are exhibited and connect the viewer within their reflective qualities. Depth pulls the viewer in while the many reflections push the viewer out, inspiring audiences to ponder, imagine and feel. Thomas’ works tempt us to slow down, and not take in facts too quickly as we are trained to. They also speak of places undiscovered, but at the same time comforting and familiar, sparking our memories of a place we feel we have been before but cannot quite recall the details. Thomas grew up in Iran and moved to San Francisco Bay area in late 70s, she now lives and works in Newport Beach California, and Las Vegas, Nevada.