Artwork

"The visual works are created to serve as "environments of emergence" -- places where species find themselves acclimating to a range of unfamiliar territories, seasons and temperatures. The art begins with a series of measurements beginning with a specific range of hand-cut wood stretchers (recycled from my earliest large-scale efforts), I engage in selecting canvas textures and colors to build with. I believe in creating a sense of balance in both shape and composition to deliver a feeling of evolution for the viewer and I work as if writing a record, a method naturally utilized from an early education in music composition. The motivation behind making these works lies in the interest of exploring possibilities of natural arrangements and plays with ideas of limitation in one's own perception."

A theme central to his practice reflects a concern for the natural world as an environmentalist and former student of ecology. He believes that making art is the most effective way in communicating immediacy of an issue and my practice begins with a space for observance and concludes with creation. A large amount of time goes into gathering items from nature as the paintings are created from time spent within wilderness areas where he films and record natural habitations, specifically in the mountain and river ecosystem of Western Pennsylvania where he is originally from introducing the audience flora and vegetation from other areas of the world where he has lived and worked. He wants the works to communicate a sense of adaptation -- feelings shaped by years of expatriation and artist residencies where creative communities are centered around collective displacement and the immediate need to create. The work reflects, confronts and rejects isolationist burdens of nationality/nationalism with the goal is to celebrate the autonomy of environments over the expectation of economies.

The titles (Akureyri, Enkoping, Rovaniemi) reflect places in which he has developed his practice and the birds represent the fundamentals of the human spirit, serving as a means to transcend our physical limitations. Radical color and subdued hues integrate to offer an experience intended to allow the viewer to reflect as well as to act. By creating and offering these "environments of emergence", he delivers a sense of place in the present and create a language that travels and translates to the areas of the world that may not have experienced a common dialogue. 

In his atmospheric and colorful paintings, Watkiss captures strange figures and uncertain lands. Employing figuration and abstraction in a practice that transcends genre, he constructs settings from photographs and feelings from memory. Articulating the physical and emotional contours of figures and landscapes with remarkable psychological depth, he evokes a simultaneous sense of longing and unease, of that which is at once inescapably familiar and acutely unknowable. It is as if he is composing a visual language is pursuing its own evolution, allowing for delicate patterns between the atmospheric and the natural. 

Thomas began his recorded music career soon after leaving Konstfack with a demo of recordings which later became Of Victory and Victim. That following Summer saw the release of the Ancestor 7" with  release show at St. marks in the Bowery. The undertaking double LP feature, Ancestor Silence was released in the spring of 2008. 

Watkiss designs the album covers and layout based on his photographs from his travels. The "reverse-board" jackets. Traveling via the utilization of art residencies has allowed him to grow his work and develop recordings while on-site and gaining cultural perspectives. "Machine (2009) was recorded while in Bergen Norway for two months in 2008 and the live recordings "Siglufjordur" and Hjalteri" (2016) were recorded while in the North of Iceland. 

Watkiss spent five years residing in East Williamsburg, where the focus became on live performances and which can be found on YouTube below. 

In 2017, he began a series of recordings at BC Studios in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The goal was to utilize the cavernous space with Martin Bisi's engineering expertise. The result from these sessions was the release of Landless "Closure" in 2019. 

YouTube

2013 - 2024

c. 2006 - 2026 Thomas Watkiss (ASCAP) | Reproduction with permission