REFLEX Painting

A lifetime painter and a veteran designer delivers his unique perspective to the canvas. Thom Surman has been involved in the creative arts for most of his life. His extensive background as a designer has allowed him a unique perspective as a painter. Integral to his art are local themes of earth, sky and water. Furthermore it is Surman’s juxtaposition of these classical elements that create his poetic vision through paint. His paintings are intended to record the interactions and constant fluctuation between these components, blurring the divide of landscape painting and abstract fields of color. Thom is interested not in static scenes but to forge a movement of light and color, within a single painting or across a series of paintings.

Surman works exclusively in oil, applying a great many layers of varying opacity onto canvas. The resulting images convey a luminosity that constantly changes in different lighting conditions. In this way he hopes to provide the viewer with a different experience of the landscape. Luminous and enlightening, Thom Surman paints vistas that merge and meld the natural world from authentic to mystical.