Denyse Thomasos: Painting & the World

(detail) Denyse Thomasos, Kingdom Come, 2011, in situ wall painting at Oakville Galleries (photo: Toni Hafkenscheid)

Julian Kreimer remembers painter Denyse Thomasos (1964-2012).

Kreimer writes: "The question [Thomasos] faced throughout her career, the one that led her towards wall-works, is one that many artists grapple with, and is particularly acute for painters: how to reconcile her interest in politics with her calling as an artist. The vast scale of her major works, both on canvas and on walls, was a way to confront this. To be engulfed by the mixture of floorplans, architectural renderings, and illusionistic spaces that could be read as a twig hut or a spaceship was to feel oneself inside a whale. It is not that they captured the scale of the world, but they were of a scale just beyond one person’s ability to take in all the world, its joys and suffering."