Christopher Thomson
Wrought Iron Steel Sculptures
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505.820.0807 call or text • art@owencontemporary.com
It was the tumult of the sixties that compelled me to drop out of Swarthmore College, move “back to the land” and become an intuitive artist. I believed that if we were to survive as a species we had to experience the wonder of life more deeply and that art could lead the way.
I lived on communes and studied with master musicians, potters and blacksmiths. I sought to express the magic of our existence through craft. I kayaked the rivers of the southwest on multi-week solo meditations walking up their deserted side-canyons playing flute for entire days and nights until my mind stilled and music, nature, and I were one.
Over the last 35 years it has been my quest to forge steel with the same consciousness and improvisational freedom I experienced in those canyons. Ironically it required the acquisition of huge industrial power hammers, presses and forges and then using them continuously until the flames and ground shaking forces could be employed improvisationally. A lifetime of practice allows me to surrender to intuitions far truer than logic.
My motivation and methodology have remained fairly constant through the many iterations of my creativity. I am an object maker. Working directly with my materials is essential. Daily interaction with metal and the way it moves informs my work and augments my sculptural vocabulary. With the help of one highly trained assistant, I create sculptures in forged steel and bronze on a scale that can be made in my rural northern New Mexico shop.
Metals’ properties captivate and inspire me. One hammer blow informs the next during the “strike while the iron is hot” immediacy of forging. Ideas are born and mature in the fires. Internalized inspirations from nature, music and art flow through me un-analyzed or translated into conscious thought. This approach produces highly personal creations but it pleases me to learn from comments of viewers, collectors and critics that they speak to universal concerns, as well.