Gilly Thomas is fascinated by the uncanny, the mysterious and chance elements or encounters in the world. These are drawn together into her subconscious and then channeled via her paintings to create intriguing images of atmospheric power, almost all of which highlight incidents relating to the human condition.
She is able to rescue fleeting, impossible messages from the edges and echoes of dreams, and hold them clear and steady in all their ambiguity and absurdity.
The long, deep shadows and elongated perspectives belong to an internal landscape, a hidden though familiar world of the mind. It is a private place beset with darkness and panic. The artist watches as she experiments on herself, curious and wounded. At once blessed and cursed with a keen unflinching eye and a fierce observant intelligence. She is left writhing in irony. Simultaneously dancing with the joy and reeling from the pain of being here. Being in it, treasuring every agonising minute…
"I draw from thinking and remembering, not seeing. Looking for the rightness of configuration of human and landscape space.It feels autonomous, sometimes - uncanny, like language not fully understood.It is textual pleasure. It is better than being possessed by the spirit of the crow and the nameless dread."
Gilly Thomas.
Gilly Thomas lives and works in Llandegai, near Bangor. She was elected to the Royal Cambrian Academy in 2008. In February 2014 she had her first exhibition at Ffin y Parc and exhibited again in 2016 & 2018. Gilly returned again in March 2022.