Second that Emotion was Ian Thomas’s sixth solo exhibition and featured large format abstract paintings with a recurring circle motif.

The paintings were a response to a list of quotes from various sources which Thomas had accumulated over the last 2 years. “You know when you read something, or someone says something or writes something, and you understand instinctively what they mean – that’s what these pictures are about”, he explained.

“They acknowledge that sometimes other people describe your own emotions or feelings or experiences in a much more powerful way than you can yourself. And it hits you in the chest when you realise that their words are as much about you as they are about them”.

Each of the paintings responded to a different quote and was intended to work not as an illustration, but as an image to accompany the title. So the titles came first and the paintings were then approached as a kind of meditation on the thought or emotion behind the title.

The circles in Thomas’s work are a recurring theme that he has been working with for some time. Their meaning has changed for him over the years – sometimes denoting absence, sometimes denoting our social sphere and the way we interact with others, and in these recent paintings, they act as a means to delve beyond the surface to what lies below. “I continue using circles because they are just a beautiful graphic shape to work with – the simplest, most perfect form”, explains Thomas.

The paintings are constructed from a starting point of numerous layers of rice paper. Circles are drawn onto the underside of the rice paper in charcoal and are then attached to canvas using shellac varnish. “I then work onto the rice paper with various media, generally leaving the circles as a blank counterpoint or with a translucent glaze of colour, so that there’s a sense of seeing through from the surface of the work to another, somewhat obscure, level below,” comments Thomas.

Ian Thomas is based at one+2 Artist Studios, the largest fine art studios in NSW, and has participated in numerous group exhibitions around the country. He has been selected to appear in the prestigious Art on the Rocks project on three occasions, and his work is held in private collections in Australia (including Colette Dinnigan’s), New Zealand, the UK and Switzerland and in corporate collections including the Sheraton on the Park, Sydney and the Grand Hyatt, Melbourne.