KIM THOMAN - BIOGRAPHY
A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Kim Thoman’s interest in art showed up at an early age. This inclination led her to study ceramics at the University of California, Davis, then to UC Berkeley, where she studied painting and drawing, receiving her BA in 1972. Thoman’s work at Berkeley gave her the opportunity to dig deep into making both two and three-dimensional work. Graduate work at San Francisco State culminated in an MFA in ceramic sculpture in 1979. Thoman concentrated on painting until 2011 when the discovery of 3D printing ignited her long-dormant interest in exploring sculptural dimension. She found that making sculpture allowed her to visually expand and develop her core beliefs that duality exists in everything.
Thoman’s work has developed in distinct phases over the years and her recent work has elements that harken back to these phases. As always, ideas about duality or opposing forces in all things dominate her expression. While in graduate school, she produced a series of drawing/paintings with attached ceramic intestine-like forms. In the early 1980s, Thoman created hard-edged paintings with cartoon-like images of men and women. In the two-panel paintings of the 1990s, the two sides were treated as independent entities, because, in the artist’s words, “each side was to hold its own…each side was informed by a different side of myself.”
In Thoman’s search for processes that aligned with her consistent interest in creating images of opposing forces, she found the computer to be a perfect tool for the more linear thinking side of herself – to be opposed by her intuitive side.
The Spiral Series of 2003 developed out of Thoman’s use of the computer. She drew linear vortexes on the computer and printed them onto paper on which she subsequently layered paint, making surreal images that seem inspired both by nature and inner states of feeling. A female-like shape, The Venus, evolved in a series of diptychs and triptychs that were created digitally and printed in 2D and paired with panels she painted with traditional oil paint. The same Venus form recurs as a 3D element in her freestanding steel sculptures, today. Scanned images of her oil paintings are used as the texture or skin for these 3D printed Venus shapes – once again satisfying her need for combining differing processes and images in her quest to explore duality.
Thoman’s art has also been influenced by extended stays in various sites in the U.S., including New Mexico, Vermont, Seattle and Virginia.
Selected grants include the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of Taos, NM, Vermont Studio Center Residency Grant and Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Change Grant.
Thoman has been showing nationally for over 30 years. Selected solo exhibitions include: The Hardin Cultural Center for the Arts, Gadsden, AL, Godard Center for the Arts, Ardmore, OK, The Peninsula Museum of Art, Burlingame, CA, The Mendocino Art Center, CA, The Anderson Center for the Arts, IN, Saint Mary’s University Gallery of Minnesota, MN, Monterey Peninsula College Art Gallery, CA, Stanford Art Spaces, CA, Bank of America World Headquarters Plaza Gallery, SF, CA, San Francisco MOMA Artists Gallery, CA, Virginia Tech University Perspective Gallery, VA and JFK University Art Gallery, CA.
She taught art in the Peralta Community College District in the San Francisco Bay Area for nearly 30 years until retiring in 2012. While continuing to draw and paint in her studio in Emeryville, Thoman has begun to use steel, making wall sculptures and works she calls Embellished Paintings that combine her paintings and steel sculptures.
In her words, Thoman says…“My art is based on a personal philosophical belief that duality exists in everything. I incorporate many levels of symbolism that come from a fascination with opposites. I am aware of their presence in the world around me, such as intellect and intuition, male and female, stillness and movement, body and soul, light and dark, and of course life and death. My artwork exists in that space that both joins and separates opposing forces. In this space, I oftentimes create new forms, all the while aiming to bring the duality into balance in hopes of finding real truths.”
In the words of art critic Peter Frank…
“If we can take away a moral and social lesson from Kim Thoman’s oeuvre, it is that conflict resolution lies within each of us. Thoman does not think of herself as wiser than the rest of us, only more fortunate by dint of her work with art to have discovered for herself the harmony of the universe. That harmony is not in the propitious alignment of forms and meanings, but in our discovery – or, shall we say, acceptance – of balance between haphazard pairings and contrapositions. Things don’t exist in opposition to other things, but only in balance with them. Finally, Thoman doesn’t resolve conflicts, but reveals their superficiality. At heart, everything is in union.”