Sharon Thomas

Garden of Eden, is an exhibition that challenges social and artistic boundaries observed as artists employing traditional techniques of painting within the Eastern and Western cultures.

Taking the starting point of the Grand Narrative painting executed by 17th century painters European Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder who were commissioned to execute grand works collaboratively for royal palaces and homes, Thomas and Liu aim to offer a contemporary alternative.

Sharing the process of painting works large and small scale, for the first time together, Liu and Thomas plan to subvert recognisable figures and scenes by introducing new figures and personal stories, with aim to question the authority of the maker when the story does not follow its expected ‘classical’ path.

Liu’s large to small-scale oil paintings on canvas offer fast abstract figurative forms, which depict recognisable allegorical historical paintings that are re-arranged and offered in a new direct format.  In contrast Thomas’s paintings and installations employ old master techniques, rendering fleshy figures in rural landscapes where classical themes are delicately distorted to offer new meanings.

Born and trained in China, Liu’s practice is one that perseveres to translate a unique queer Asian perspective into one that can be read by a Western eye.  Conscious in the setting of his chosen base of Glasgow of his status as a person of colour, Liu’s practice analyses a history of painting executed dominantly via a white heterosexual male gaze.

For Thomas, a British painter completing her art training in New York, lack of female experience and visual critique in both Western and European historical artmaking is corrected, offering a heterosexual female perspective of a 21st century artist. For Thomas both religious/mythological and platitudinal settings are used to explore the politics and beauty of the male form.

This exhibition offers a one-off opportunity for collaboration, where a Glasgow audience can experience and witness a dual painting project between two experienced artists who have never before shared the same forum to present their painting practice.