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Rhodes University alumni around the world continually excel in their chosen fields. Thomasin Dewhurst is no exception; a respected artist who moved to the USA in 2000. She has been invited to exhibit her work in a solo exhibition entitled The Emergent Body: Paintings and Drawings at the Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The exhibition ran in January and tied in with the Manifest Gallery's exploration of the human figure, including the nude in contemporary art.
Dewhurst received her Bachelor of Fine Art degree, with distinction in Painting, from Rhodes University in 1994, and then went on to complete her Masters in Fine Art at the University of the Witwatersrand. She has since received various awards for her work, and has exhibited numerous times both in South Africa and overseas. Her work has twice graced the Grahamstown Arts Festival, with two solo exhibitions of her drawings and paintings respectively. Her artworks form part of a number of private and permanent collections, including the Gauteng legislature in South Africa and Ericsson South Africa.
The Manifest Gallery is well respected and attracts attention from all over the USA and around the world. Not simply a gallery, it also functions as a hub for creative research and innovation at all levels of artistic endeavour.
Her new exhibition is described as providing a snapshot view into the near-side of the lineage of painting by women. Arttimes website says that Dewhurst's works, while “inevitably current, share a bond in time to those of Gentileschi, Cassatt, Morisot, Kollwitz, Nourse, Saville, and others.”
Dewhurst herself says of her works: “The human form, through its contours, texture and the stretch of skin over muscle and bone, conveys an emotional and philosophical aesthetic that is the driving force behind my painting and drawing practice.
“This aesthetic finds expression in the depiction of tactility: the painted or drawn body presented closely within the viewer's personal space and giving the viewer a sense of being able to touch the rendered flesh. The body thus becomes emotive. At this point in the development of a work there is a feeling, on my part, of commitment to the work and a fidelity to the story that is presenting itself... The figure is the central means of realising the narrative.”
Dewhurst works both as an artist and an art instructor in the Bay Area of the US. As a teacher of both children and adults, she was recently officially recognised by the district's School Board for 'outstanding enrichment to the arts and music education of elementary students.' As an illustration of her versatility, Dewhurst will, at the same time as the Manifest exhibition, have new drawing work showing at the Fontbonne University Fine Art Gallery in St. Louis, Missouri.
Picture source: Manifest Gallery