Beach of Silenus

Robert Thompson appropriated compositions from Old European Masters, rearranging and integrating them with his own symbolic language and figural style. In his reconfiguration of established themes, he eliminated narrative content and instead created abstract patterns that loosely convey a feeling or an idea. The thick acrylic paint produces a dynamic, textured surface; flat, overlapping fields of color create linear and chromatic rhythms and planes advance and recede in space. Despite deriving inspiration from canonical works of art, Thompson's improvisatoinsal working method demonstrates affinities with the post-bebop jazz of the 1960s.