statement

C A P P Y T H O M P S O N

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a painter, I combine two ancient lineages in my work that of the Medieval artists who painted on stained glass and that of the Greek artisans who painted clay pots. Like them I paint pictorial narratives. My work is pulled in opposite directions by the panel and vessel forms. With a long history as a public art form, stained glass is an architectural medium that belongs to the collective. The vessel, on the other hand, exists on an intimate scale, relating to the individual in its form and function. This conflict finds expression in my work as a desire to communicate broadly on the one hand and an impulse to go deeply into the personal on the other.

In college, in the early seventies, I was drawn to stained glass as a perceptually compelling medium driven by light. I realized that if I wanted to paint on it, I would have to teach myself grisaille, the Medieval technique of gray-tonal painting on glass. This technique involves painting and firing vitreous paints onto glass. First the black line work called tracery is painted onto the glass surface and permanently fixed by firing.Then a wash of black paint, called a matt, is applied over the tracery and subtracted by specially shaped bristle brushes. The tonality and patterning (modeling) created by this subtractive process is then fixed by firing.

My first panels were heavily influenced by the art of the Medieval period from many cultural sources–Hindu, Pagan, Judaic, Buddhist, Christian, Islamic. I loved the naïve naturalistic content and emotional expressiveness of that period. I began to design and paint panels based on the narrative content of European mythology, fables and folktales, drawn in oblique projection, with jewel-like colors.

I worked in stained glass for twelve years. Then in 1987, during a summer job at Pilchuck Glass School, I was handed a large transparent blown-glass bowl to paint and saw immediately–like the Greeks of antiquity–that a vessel combining cylindrical and spherical forms is a nearly perfect structure for painted narration. The glass vessel is a separate world for the story. Its transparency allows the painting to become sculptural, seen from one side through to the other, changing as the viewer circumambulates the structure.

This was the beginning of a thirteen-year period of vessel painting that continues in the present. I spent several years working in black and white, captivated by the compositional possibilities of images drawn on the vessel form. Gradually I came to appreciate how the qualities of blown glass, colored vitreous paints, and the metaphors hidden in the vessel form could bring more meaning to my work.

As a metaphor, the vessel can represent various objects and functions deeply embedded in our psyches and culture. For example, it embodies various concepts such as internal/external, center/rim, surface/interior, boundary/territory, open/closed, above/below, background/ foreground, male/female, container/content, world/self–to name a few oppositions. The form itself is made from molten sand and constructed by the application of breath and turning–allegories for creation, planetary bodies and time. The ability of glass to hold space, color and light suggests the spiritual qualities of transparency, translucence and transcendence.

About ten years ago I found myself moving away from existing mythological narrative and toward compositions that drew upon images and themes from my personal life. Elements would drift up and assemble into picture-poems that seemed to have a life of their own. I began to "read" these works as reflections of the spiritual and psychological issues in my life. I painted members of my family and myself in a kind of autobiographical fantasy, working with the mythopoetic materials of my life. I cast myself into scenes from various world spiritual traditions.

I am currently working on the largest project of my career–one that brings me full circle back to stained glass–a painted window-wall measuring 33 feet high by 90 feet wide for the new south concourse at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. Entitled "I Was Dreaming of Spirit Animals . . . ." the design depicts a couple sleeping high in a tower-house. Behind them is the arc of the night sky, shining with 17 animal constellations of the Northern Hemisphere. Across the sky, winged horses Pegasus and Equilius draw a chariot bearing the Sun and the Moon, who sprinkle stars upon the dreamers and travelers below.

This project incorporates into a stained-glass composition what I have learned from vessel painting. The fabrication method allows me to float the imagery upon an expanse of color laminated onto plate glass. The building becomes a vessel, and stained glass washes the space with the brilliance of colored light.