BIO
Cristy Thom is the embodiment of contemporary art. She has
been an artist her whole life; however, she did not always
produce art as we see it today. It was in 1993 that she
realized becoming a painter was the way for her to communicate
with the world. The cliché that we all know so well,
that of the “starving artist,” is a foreign
concept to her. It never occurred to Cristy that most artists
live in obscurity while taking on other types of work to
“pay the bills.” To choose a path that is so
alternative as a vehicle to positively impact the world
is daring.
All she can do is paint. Cristy has never held a “job”.
From the ages of eighteen to twenty, however, she did have
some involvement with work. She was a Playboy centerfold,
the Snap-on tool girl, and a generic bathing-suit model.
She was afforded the opportunity to travel the world as
a result. This brief stint in the Hollywood scene also landed
her a part in a low budget movie and some television commercials.
Nothing to be proud of . . . . She is still a member of
SAG.
Prior to these two years of “work,” Cristy Thom
was trapped in an odd world of “child-acting-as-adult”
(that time when kids tend to think they are mature and equipped
to make good decisions for themselves). She dropped out
of school in the ninth grade, became the live-in girlfriend
to a forty-one-year-old man, and ultimately became estranged
from the normal life of a teenager.
Cristy Thom was an object. Her physical self always seemed
to take precedence over her mental self. It was only through
painting that she began to communicate with her environment
in an intellectual and abstract way. She graduated with
a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design as one of the
most ambitious and prolific painters in her class. She defined
her own style has refined that style into a compelling body
of work in the years since college.
The artist before you today has had a life time of experiences
that seem to permeate into oil paint images. A keen eye
for design and color coupled with serious life-lessons make
for a visually compelling body of work. Cristy Thom’s
life is only relevant as an illustration of the possibilities
for transcendence. Cristy Thom, artist, can not be separated
from her objet d’ art. To know one is to love the
other. Her work is filled with as many dualities and contradictions
as her life. She is an organized pack-rat that creates abstract
photorealistic paintings. It is a process of filtering and
reducing that produces a tantalizing moment on canvas. Flat
and colorful.
