One of the important elements for me, is to create works that need the viewer to interact with them to fulfil their potential.
Tom's works question the boundaries between painting and sculpture. He originally trained as a sculptor, but his passion for abstract painting led him to make unique works that convey, at the same time, surface and three-dimensionality.
The first works that we showed at the gallery, back in 2006, were made out of audio tape. Different widths and shades of grey and black, the tape hung from a metal frame, shimmering, imperceptibly moving and playing with optic illusion and spatial relationships.
His move to the South of France imbued his works with a sense of colour. Lavender, yellow, green and blues from La Provence were applied onto perspex. With the use of diverse materials like acrylic panels, paint, resin and rubber, the work expands two-dimensional surfaces into three-dimensional space. The metal frame that sustained his earlier tape pieces from behind now emerged as an integral part of the work. With every new show, his works and progress were always surprising. Slowly the paint strokes began to disappear from the surface and his straight lines began to wander. The cast acrylic was now grooved, cut and polished.
Tom works in series, a way that allows him to investigate deeply the technical and conceptual aspects he focuses on; process, chance, optical illusion and an enduring curiosity for what a material can do. Tom’s work teaches the viewer that painting and sculpture are not antagonistic media, but rather that they can coexist in one and the same structure feeding off each other until we are unsure which is which.