#thomasgarner

A Brief Statement:

I generally work in two different but related genera: one is Venetian inspired and the other is LA urban, both reflecting the two poles of my life’s experience. I lived for 24 years in Italy near Venice and now live and work in Los Angeles.

My Venetian work is about Art and Art history and how we see Art through the perceptual and cultural filters of representation and presentation, i.e.: the painting and the museum.

The LA urban work is related to that as an extension of the idea of the filter from photography, through Photoshop to the ephemeral multiplicity of drive-by-culture imagery.

I studied at UCSD at a time when painting and drawing, in the traditional sense, was not even offered in the Visual Arts curriculum. So my artistic foundation is built on Conceptual Art and semiology. Later I went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice (the Most Serene Republic) where I learned to paint and found a strong nexus between craft and concept.

I currently teach Classical Oil Painting in the Style of the Venetian Masters at UCLA Extension.