September 20 – October 26, 2025
GRO Artist Will Thoms exhibition, 21 9x9s, can be seen in the Gallery Annex. These small mixed-media paintings begin with a visual idea, a meandering line, a shape, a splash of color that is eventually forgotten as the painting moves to completion. Sometimes a painting resolves quickly and sometimes it evolves over days or weeks: the goal is letting things happen as they will. Thoms writes:
“I want each painting to have a clear physical presence and to come forward from its place on the wall to meet you, the viewer. There is no illusion and no reference to anything beyond the thing itself. The driving impulse for me is always one of hopeful, open-ended experimentation and the simple pleasure of making something new. My artistic interests lie in the material world, in the beauty of the ordinary. As Gary Snyder says…” chisels, bent nails, wheelbarrows and squeaky doors are all teaching the truth of the way things are.”