Thomas Lisle

United Kingdom

Thomas Lisle is a British artist based in London. He started making glitch videos in the style of paintings in the early 1980s and pioneered the genre. Recently, Thomas’s works have been related to painting and the idea of progressing paintings in the digital age, time-based paintings and painting in 3D. He has had several solo exhibitions, mostly in London, and some of his works are featured in the collections of the Tate Modern and Museum of Modern Art. 

Thomas’s work combines abstract forms, figurative, simulated liquids, simulated brush strokes, and complex programmed events. His work responds to colour, form and motion in ways only possible with 3D animation and simulation techniques to make dynamic, dramatic and thought-provoking art. He draws inspiration from nature, psychology, comparative philosophy and the past and present history of painting.


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Avalanche

Avalanche is about a more exuberant breakup and disintegration of the snow, and the paint is calmer and more homogenous. The snow falls from higher ground and gets formed in odd ways, which make strange surrealist shapes, and the snow physics are hacked to produce more abstract, non-realistic behaviours and outcomes. It's not a big epic force of nature avalanche but a small-scale gentle pastiche of an avalanche. If the theme of these videos is breaking up or dissolving old ideas, old concepts, and old feelings, then this is washing away with more power than the other two videos. 

 

White is often associated with purity and compassion, and few substances in nature are more white than snow. The snow forms in this artwork were created by painting curving and flowing shapes in 3D and then building invisible shapes which are moving and shifting, a bit like leaves or boughs bending or snapping under the weight of the snow, forcing the snow to fall, making dynamic and abstract background to the 3D paintings which are calmer less chaotic. The paint painting elements are also made by physically painting with a tablet pen in 3D, animated and programmed to flow and disperse in zero gravity, floating and weightless, and the snow is heavy.

 

The paint and the snow are both breaking apart, but in very different ways, and it's the contrast of colours, action, temperature, and gravity, together with the still background, which produces a kind of balanced visual harmony. 

 

Like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese woodblock prints, these artworks are made with layers of ideas, form, movement, and colour; the clear and concise differences between the layers balance to create a kind of abstract compositional wholeness.

technique

3d

format

portrait

duration

00:58

year

2024

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