Terry Thompson
T-Bird Motel
2020

Name: T-Bird Motel
Brand: Terry Thompson
Price: 6700 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Artist Statement Nothing But Neon, 2021 I see beauty in old neon signs. I have always been fascinated by the glow inside the hand-bent, glass tubes. I enjoy the sculptural, mechanical, one-of-a-kind aspects of my subjects. And the words, fonts, caricatures, and colors; I love all of that too. Sometimes these signs are weather worn, rusted and dilapidated, with layers of peeling paint – all of which speak to change, and unrelenting time. I try to embrace and honor these signs from a by-gone era, an idealized “America” reminiscent of my youth. They are part of our history, for better or worse. My process begins with finding the sign. I spend a lot of time searching for them, looking on-line, and in books. Some I just stumble upon. When I travel, I hunt for signs, so many of my paintings chronical my travels. I’ve painted signs from Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Oklahoma, Nevada, Indiana, Montana, Texas, and my home state of California. I take lots of photographs of each sign, often at different times of the day. I study the sign; I strive to absorb the essence of the sign and the place. Then, after doing a basic drawing, I begin painting, usually in many thin layers. I often make numerous changes in color and composition, until I am happy. Sadly, many of the signs that I’ve painted have since been destroyed or have disappeared. I never thought I would be doing documentation, but as time passes, this has become another facet of my work. Artist Biography Terry Thompson was born in 1963 in Mountain View, CA. His initial studies were in industrial technology and he worked as an equipment engineer for various tech companies in Silicon Valley. While the work was interesting to Thompson, he could not get away from painting and went on to receive his BA and MFA from San Jose State University (CA). Thompson has exhibited throughout the West Coast and his work can be found in private collections throughout the world and in the permanent collections of The San Jose Museum of Art, The Nevada Museum of Art, The California Museum -Sacramento, The de Saisset Museum of Art - Santa Clara University, and The Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Terry Thompson lives and works in San Francisco.

Creator:

Terry Thompson (1963, American)

Creation Year:

2020

Dimensions:

Height: 32 in (81.28 cm)Width: 24 in (60.96 cm)

Medium:

Oil,Canvas

Movement & Style:

Photorealist

Period:

2010-

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Fairfield, CT

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU183212114992

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Terry Thompson

For nearly twenty years, Thompson has focused primarily on painting old neon signs that have somehow avoided the wrecking ball - the signs that have lived and beat the odds. These sculptural signs exist as historically and emotionally charged metaphors for the unrelenting passage of time. In his paintings, Thompson seeks to to reveal the hidden beauty of these banal, rusty relics, by rendering them in paint. Thompson finds his subjects while exploring the forgotten back streets of cities across the United States. This act of discovery coupled with being in the physical presence of these signs, is crucial to his process. Thompson is searching for the diamonds in the discarded materials of our heavily commercial culture - the hidden beauty in the mundane and often-overlooked. Thompson is fascinated by packaging typography and graphics and has done a series of vintage food product paintings depicting TV dinners, soda and soup cans, cereal boxes, and candy wrappers. The oversized and playful paintings of these products take the mundane and re-packages it for our contemporary eyes - objects that were used and thrown away take on a new power to evoke emotion and memory. Thompson delves deep into the brilliant design aesthetic of the objects. From a time before the current mass media advertising bombardment of the devices we all carry in our pockets, these iconic signs and packages were an essential forms of advertising - if the sign caught your eye, you’d remember it. Instead of repetition as is the case now, designers had perhaps only one shot to make that statement. Text is a common thread uniting both the sign and packaging paintings as is Thompson’s interest in capturing what is often considered purely functional and utilitarian by one era yet comes to mean more in the ensuing years. These signs or product packages represent so much more with the passage of time - our youth and the ever present nostalgia for the perceived “simpler times” of the past. Terry Thompson was born in 1963 in Mountain View, CA. His initial studies were in industrial technology and he worked as an equipment engineer for various tech companies in Silicon Valley. While the work was interesting to Thompson, he could not get away from painting and went on to receive his BA and MFA from San Jose State University (CA). Thompson has exhibited throughout the West Coast and his work can be found in private collections throughout the world and in the permanent collections of The San Jose Museum of Art, The Nevada Museum of Art, The California Museum -Sacramento, The de Saisset Museum of Art - Santa Clara University, and The Fort Wayne Museum of Art. Terry Thompson lives and works in San Francisco.