Contemporary Fine Art @ The Piper Art Bar

Tomas Clayton was born in Birmingham, UK, in 1957. Tomas’ parents divorced early in his life. Like many before and since, the absence of a father had a great impact on his life, an impact which, to some extent, still informs the emotional undercurrent and subject matter in his art. His mother remarried in the late 1960's, moving the family to Hereford where Tomas won a place on a three-year Art Foundation Course at Hereford Art College. After that, he moved back to Birmingham to study graphic design and illustration at Ruskin Hall, leaving to become a graphic designer and animator for Central Television and the BBC. After several years in television, he worked as a successful freelance designer and illustrator for many high-profile companies. A seminal moment occurred in the late 1970's; Tomas was invited by a friend and former tutor to see the semi-derelict Victorian town house that he was planning to renovate. ''I began finding old photographs in the rubble at the back of the house, dozens of them, formal portraits and family gatherings, turn of the last century stuff, stiff collars, stiff corsets and haunted faces. The presence of many of these lost personalities was so involving it became almost a communion; I began to imagine them as intrigued as much by me as I with them.'' Although his career as a fine artist was still several years away, he had found a subtle muse in the strong emotional thread discovered in that which had been considered dispensable. On painting 'The Sense of Self' Certain states of consciousness induce in the face congruity. Research into what has been called the 'default mode network' of the brain suggests that in this state, the brain may be running life simulations and providing a sense of 'self', Interestingly, often observed in those daydreaming. This is the key to understanding the work of Tomas Clayton; his portrayal, not of any particular individual, but of the unconscious emotional connection, the momentary frisson of understanding we all secretly know when the real person behind the facade of sociability is unveiled. 'The only one who knows this ounce of words is just a token, is he who has a ton to tell that must remain unspoken.' - Louise Thomas Hardin Tomas Clayton is represented by Nicholas Bayldon Pritchard, The Contemporary Fine Art Gallery Eton. He has also exhibited at The Mall Galleries, St. James, London. He works from his home in Bridgnorth, a quiet market town in Shropshire, with his wife, daughter, fourteen chickens, and a cat called Pop.