Email: ztartist@hotmail.com
Phone: 443-413-3662
Location: Baltimore, Maryland
Baker Artist Award Page

Representation:

C. Grimaldis Gallery
523 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21201
410 539 1080 phone
410 539 2229 fax info@cgrimaldisgallery.com

Thomas Punzmann Gallery
wilhelm-leuschner-strasse 10 - 1
60329 frankfurt am main, germany
tel.: + 49 - (0)69 - 244 50 191
cellphone: + 49 - (0)170 - 565 1982
info@punzmann-gallery.com

Artist Statement

The paintings of my night series are exterior scenes set in the midst of anonymous, silent streets, and illuminated by the isolated lights of the nocturnal world that turn otherwise ordinary moments into mysterious and provocative tableaux. 
I have been investigating the unique effects of this charged atmosphere, and try to create images that are ambiguous in narrative and evoke complex emotional responses.  
I wish for the paintings to go beyond (or beneath) the surface drama of the scenes to reveal, in half-lit moments, a private realm of experience.  Surrounded by sheltering trees and glowing houses, against the looming darkness and a silence at once ominous and reassuring, the solitary figures of young women encounter the promises and hazards of the night, as the viewer in turn encounters them.

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

Selected Exhibitions
2012 C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, MD, Night Visions (Solo Show)
2011 Art. Fair 21, Cologn, Germany
2011 Thomas Punzman Gallery, marbella (málaga) spain, Time Remembered
2010 Janine Bean Gallery, Berlin
2010 Stricoff Fine Art, Chealsea, NYC
2010 Hot Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland
2009 First Gallery, Rome, Italy, Women's Life (Two Person)
2009 Los Angeles Art Show, Los Angeles, CA
2009 Timothy Yarger Fine Art, Beverly Hills, CA
2008 YARGER | STRAUSS Downtown Annex, Los Angeles, CA, Corpus Maximus
2008 Los Angeles Art Show, Los Angeles, CA
2007 Bridge Art Fair, Miami, FL
2007 Robert Lange Gallery, Charleston, SC
2007 The Creative Alliance, Baltimore, MD
2007 Towson Arts Collective, Towson, MD, Suburbia Redefined
2006 Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD, Critics Residency
2006 Gormley Gallery, Baltimore, MD, Pulse
2006 Gallery Francois, Greenspring, MD
2005 Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, Annapolis, MD, Art Noir
2005 Post Logic, New York, NY
2005 Maryland Art Place, Invitational Benefit Auction, Baltimore, MD
2005 Current, Baltimore, MD, Black and White Meet Color (Two Person)
2005 One World, Baltimore, MD
2004 Frameworks, Santa Barbara, CA
2004 Artscape, Baltimore, MD
2003 Waldorf School, Baltimore, Maryland
2003 MFA Circle Gallery, Annapolis, MD, Jurors Choice
2003 Angelfall Studios, Baltimore, MD, Narrative Paintings
2002 Sassafras Gallery, Baltimore, MD

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

Bibliography
2012 New American Paintings, Mid-Atlantic edition (No. 100)
2010 Clark, Ann. “Why can’t I be a suburban hyper-voyeur noir-master?”
2009 New American Paintings, Mid-Atlantic edition (No. 81)
2007 Baltimore Interview, Joseph Young, “Sex and Mystery: Paintings of Zachary Thornton,”
New American Paintings, Mid-Atlantic edition (No. 69)
2006 Wei, Lilly. “MAPPING the Alternative,” Curator’s statement to 20th Annual
Critics’ Residency Program catalog, 1 - 2.
Gershin, Justin. “Memory and Disintegration: On Zachary Thornton,
Jessie Lehson, and Julia Kim Smith,” essay from catalog to 20th
Annual Critics’ Residency Program, 3 - 5.
M.A.P. 20th Annual Critics’ Residency Program, Exhibition Catalog Cover
McNatt, Glenn, The Baltimore Sun.
2005 Baltimore City Paper.
2004 Online Juried Exhibition, http://Project30.com

Reviews and Press

Ann Maree Clark
July 2010 . suburban hyper-voyeur noir master

" Zachary Thornton works in an old-fashioned style of art making - a style that ‘rewards on many levels’. It’s the sort of work a person might actually ruminate on; consider both on its own terms as well as in its historical context. One might really enjoy it, even, draw pleasure from the act of looking at it, without having to glean most of that enjoyment from one’s own simultaneously smug and self-deprecating sense of humour or other demonstrations of general mental dexterity, as has been the case with much of the contemporary Art."

Marco Di Capua
October 2008 . Women’s Life FIRST GALLERY Via Roma 14 Margutta 

            “At First Gallery in Rome is, in a complicated match between female figures, the paintings of AmericanZach Thornton (Maryland, 1979) and sculptures of Italian Paolo Schmidlin (Milan, 1964), a project curated by Marco Di Capua . In both cases, these defiant muse, distant, mysterious: young women on the nights of a suburban landscape, Thornton, girls mature women but also eccentric, irrepressible in their profusion of detail and emotional stress in issuing, for Schmidlin. These are the signals that triggers the inner life (sensual, sad, unsatisfied, happy, uninhibited, yearning, enigmatic) of women.”  


Baltimore Interview
January 2007 . www.BaltimoreInterview.com

“And in looking at his work we feel this investment in character, the drawing out of emotion and thought in the women's bodies and faces. Yet,  though not as striking or immediately apparent to the eye is the time he has taken with the hazy forms of buildings and trees, the half-fading, half-emerging atmosphere at the wings of the canvas, that just-dark mystery Zach says he remembers so vividly from childhood.”


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 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."