Contact
Email: zach@zacharythornton.com
Location: Baltimore, Maryland

Represented By:
YARGER | STRAUSS
Beverly Hills, CA
www.yargerstrauss.com
info@yargerstrauss.com
t: 310.278.4400
f: 310.278.6771

Artist Statement
My work deals with mystery, sexuality, sentimentality, nostalgia, the joys and pains of discovery and the revealing of hidden truths. The subjects in my paintings chose to reveal just enough of themselves to cause curiosity, leaving the viewer to discover their identity and purpose.

I often draw inspiration from the contradictions of idealized suburban life: the emptiness of its expanses, its facade of cheery perfection, its denuded landscape and looming darkness, and its touching sadness. The figures that appear in this ambiguous atmosphere embody those qualities, but also express the human reality of private, personal conflicts. Each of my paintings reveals a moment in a life that remains open to conjecture.

My technique is influenced by traditional art, as well as by photography and film, the latter especially in its composition and drama.

Education
2001 B.F.A. Maryland Institute College of Art
1997 Calvert Hall College High School

Exhibitions
2008 Corpus Maximus, Los Angeles, CA, YARGER | STRAUSS Downtown Annex
2008 Los Angeles Art Show, Los Angeles, CA, YARGER | STRAUSS
2007 Bridge Art Fair, Miami, FL, YARGER | STRAUSS
2007 Robert Lange Gallery, Charleston, SC
2007 The Creative Alliance, Baltimore, MD
2007 Towson Arts Collective, Suburbia Redefined, Towson, MD
2006 Maryland Art Place, Critics Residency, Baltimore, MD
2006 Gallery Francois, Annual Group Exhibition, Greenspring, MD
2005 Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, Art Noir, Annapolis, MD
2005 Post Logic, New Paintings, New York, NY
2005 Maryland Art Place, Benefit Auction, Baltimore, MD
2005 Current Gallery, Black and White Meet Color, Baltimore, MD
2005 One World, Baltimore, MD
2004 Frameworks, New Landscapes, Santa Barbara, CA
2004 Artscape, Hall or Portraits, Baltimore, MD
2004 Projekt30.com, New York, Online
2003 Waldorf School, Baltimore, Maryland
2003 MFA Circle Gallery, Jurors Choice, Annapolis, MD
2003 Angelfall Studios, Narrative Paintings, Baltimore, MD
2002 Sassafras Gallery, Nude Night, Baltimore, MD

Publications
2007 New American Paintings, Mid-Atlantic edition (No. 69)
2006 Exhibition Catalogue, 20th Annual Critics' Residency Program, Baltimore, MD
2006 Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, MD
2005 Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore, MD

Awards
2006 Baltimore City Individual Artist Grant
2005 Maryland State Arts Council Grant

Reviews and Press

Baltimore Interview
January 2007 . www.BaltimoreInterview.com

"We learn that many of his compositions arise from combinations of photographs, one perhaps of a girlfriend, the other maybe taken years earlier, a photo of a house, which he then melds together on the canvas. He will also stage the photos he needs, positioning his subject under a streetlight on a summer night, say, which he then will bring back to the easel. "I'm looking for a kind of complexity," Zach says of this process, "a mix of feelings--happy, sinister--and a kind of mysteriousness. I like having three or four possibilities of what might be going on in the painting."

Baltimore Sun
January 2006 . Glenn McNatt

"Zachary Thornton's strikingly realistic paintings are inspired by memories of people from his past, who recall the uneasy urban denizens of Edward Hopper's paintings. His images have a startlingly lifelike quality that manages not only to convey the appearance of his subjects but also to suggest something of their psychological makeup."

Baltimore Sun
January 2005 . Glenn McNatt

"One of the show's standouts, painter Zachary Thornton, has produced a series of highly accomplished oil-on-canvas portraits that effectively convey something of their subjects' character as well as appearance. The sleek surfaces of these portraits certainly demonstrate the artist's mastery of light, color and form, but what really makes them work is their startlingly life-like quality: You almost expect to see these people breathe."

Baltimore City Paper
November 2004 . Ned Oldham

"Nearly every piece in the opening show at Current, the choice new downtown gallery, holds its weight in a well-installed and inviting exhibit. Tall street-front windows and high ceilings give the space big-city curb appeal, and the collective of 15 artists who made a successful pitch to the Downtown Partnership for a six-month—and ultimately, one hopes, longer—stint in the city-owned location seem, for the most part, to have a strong sense of how best to exploit the space."

Dominating a rear side wall, Zachary Thornton’s life-sized oil-on-canvas portrait, “Rosie and Claire,” recalls the portraits of John Singer Sargent (and likewise, the American living-room version of family portraits in oil) in its composition, and Francisco Goya in its unflattering realism. In conveying a sense of unqualified humanity, “Rosie and Claire” succeeds.


Baltimore City Paper
January 2003 . Gadi Dechter

"Zachary Thornton's smaller studies of suburban subjects--simple houses, trees, parks--are lovingly detailed studies of the poignant geometry of a sagging roof or the shimmering cloud of color crowning an autumn tree. Even more affecting are the two larger portraits that accompany the landscapes. In his "self portrait", Thornton, a recent Maryland Institute College of Art graduate and high school art teacher, demonstrates a real sensitivity for self-portraiture, beautifully capturing the fragility of the human subject caught between the pose of examiner and examined."