Tuesday, May 9, 2017

The visionary paintings of Shawn Thornton


self portrait, Shawn Thorton
All throughout my early adulthood, I struggled from the mental and physical effects of a slow growing tumor in my brain, the symptoms of which were repeatedly misdiagnosed by my doctors as purely psychological in origin, and it ultimately took over half a decade to get a proper diagnosis and treatment to shrink the tumor. I suffered immeasurably during this period from having repeatedly undergone a host of treatments meant to treat the symptoms of mental illness, and paradoxically, from a mental illness that ultimately could not be contained. The tumor was in the very center of my brain, in a small, mysterious organ at the top of the spinal column, the pineal gland. I didn’t have any prior reason to consider the actual material existence of the pineal before this. 
During his time at art school, Shawn Thornton unknowingly developed cancer of the pineal gland. As his condition progressed his art transformed into something awash in mythology and symbolism. His portfolio is astonishing. More HERE, and HERE.
click on image for a HI-Rez view
I suffered from a slow growing cancer in my pineal gland while I attended art school and during subsequent years while my paintings developed with an underlined mythology that alluded directly to the pineal years before I even know of its existence.
click on image for a HI-Rez view
Painting, for me, is largely an attempt to decrypt the mechanisms of illness through a disciplined medium. I feel, on some deep internal level, that through my painting practice I’m engaged in a psychic process to illuminate the intricate vessels and cogs of an insidious physic current that stems, in part, from having had a serious illness, and all the subtle and profound ways I was altered by this experience.
click on image for a HI-Rez view
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3 comments:

M R Clark said...

http://shawnthorntonpainting.com/home.html

for those of you in NY, there is a show up right now, I just noticed while perusing my instagram feed with my morning coffee. Amazing work!

Uriah said...

These remind me of torus physics the interconnection of things through electromagnetic energy fields.

This link takes you to a fun page of short videos explaining torus physics and dynamic flow process and electromagnetic fields. Really cool stuff you know and have seen but never thought of that way.

http://www.cosmometry.net/the-torus---dynamic-flow-process

On a side note I have been studying hieroglyphics of Egypt.I do not know the reason but I have found the OWL is the only letter of the alphabet that faces forward. It is called a profile because the body faces the left but the face looks forward. This could be because owls have flat faces and it's easier to distinguish them from other bird glyphs that way? Did you know the OWL is the hieroglyph for the letter "M". Uriah

Uriah said...

To add more on the M and the owl If you look at the owl hieroglyphic it has an M for eye brows. This is one reason the face looks forward I'm guessing but also from what I know (little) of hieroglyphs things that face forward mean something. Few characters faced forward one of them is BES the dwarf god check him out and tell me he don't look like he's from the fairy realm. Some people see similarity in BES and the character center of the Aztec calendar. Both face front and stick out their tongue.