Wherever he goes, Santee resident Walt Thomas is looking around him, noting the subtleties of light and color in nature. The natural world enchants him so much that sometimes he creates his own worlds—in mixed media pieces.
Having grown up on a Nebraska farm gave Thomas a deep appreciation of nature and the wide-open spaces. His imagination colored the world around him.
Wherever he goes, Santee resident Walt Thomas is looking around him, noting the subtleties of light and color in nature. The natural world enchants him so much that sometimes he creates his own worlds—in mixed media pieces.
Having grown up on a Nebraska farm gave Thomas a deep appreciation of nature and the wide-open spaces. His imagination colored the world around him.
His art has always hinted of the magical and mystical, but always something in nature. Some of Thomas’s most whimsical and eye-catching work depict imaginary universes and galaxies with planets of all colors.
When Thomas is not painting or creating mixed media pieces, he is shooting—with a camera, that is. He and his wife Sandy Thomas live near Mission Trails Park where birds of all kinds are constantly visiting their back yard. Thomas has his camera within reach so that he can capture the antics of the birds.
His photographic career began as Art Director of “Nashville Magazine.” The work of freelancers did not satisfy his editorial needs, so he bought a camera and had another photographer teach him how to use it.
“I’ve been taking professional photographs ever since,” Thomas said.
With the advent of digital photography, Thomas developed his own art technique, called optillusion, in 2005.
“An optillusion is a picture that appears to change in some subtle ways as you view it from different angles. The only moving part is the viewer,’ he said.
At a reception at the Bard Gallery in University Heights this month, Thomas had the opportunity to discuss much of his optillusion art with the visitors. “The theme for this show is galactic,” he said.
One of his paintings called “O & B,” with different colored planets, drew a lot of questions about the title.
“’O & B’” stands for out and back, or maybe orange and blue. There’s probably something else it stands for, too,” he joked.
“I use airbrush or spray paint, a little bit of everything. I also learned a lot from offset printing and the manipulating of dots,” he said.
“Golden Opportunities,” the name of a mixed media piece depicting gold planets, got people asking questions about its title as well.
“I got so tired of hearing people complain about the economy. So my response was ‘Look around here and see all the opportunities,’” Thomas said.
Thomas walked over to a mixed media work in purples and reds called “Spontaneous Unfoldment” that resembled worlds colliding.
“I did this one for a cute red-haired lady I was dating because I knew she wanted something to match with the décor of her house,” Thomas said, winking at his wife.
Mollie Kellogg, co-director of the Bard Gallery, asked Thomas how long it took him to complete a piece.
“Nobody knows. I work on six to twelve pieces at one time,” he said.
“And now everybody wants to know what you see yourself doing in five years,” Kellogg said
“Big plans that I can’t tell anyone else yet,” Thomas said, smiling.
Thomas likes to say that his art career began in kindergarten. His teachers noticed his passion for art, so they always gave him extra assignments to do.
“I realized later they were watching to see what I would create next in the classroom,” said Thomas.
But when Thomas entered high school, there were no art classes, so he took art correspondence courses with Art Instruction, Inc., “the folks who made the “Draw Me” Girl so popular in the 50s,” he said.
After high school, Thomas enrolled in Kearney State College, which is where his art first began selling.
“Others began to buy my work and I’ve been selling ever since,” said Thomas. He now regularly sells his artwork on weekends on the International Lawn in Balboa Park.
Thomas chose the University of Denver to earn his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree. He continues to work in all kinds of media, including watercolor, oils, acrylics, pastels, collage, and drawing.
For more information about Walt Thomas’s art, go to www.visible-concepts.com.
