Painting by J.E. Thomas 4 Artworks Sold

Passage: Source

Oil, Canvas, Ready to hang

100cm (W) x 127cm (H) x 4cm (D)

Certificate of Authenticity Included
A$4,000 15% Off Artwork

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Arrives 4–6 Aug

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Artwork Description

Passage is an ongoing series in which landscape becomes a site of interior travel. Rather than depicting a specific place, each work maps the shifting topographies of memory, emotion, and lived experience. These paintings are not destinations; they are thresholds—moments of transition where the visible world meets the unseen movements of the mind.

My process begins with materials that hold their own histories: pigment, clay, marble dust, and oil. Mixed together, they form a surface that is both fragile and resistant, echoing the layered nature of consciousness. I work with the physical weight of these materials, allowing gravity, erosion, and sedimentation to take part in the composition. The result is a tactility that suggests the landscape is forming and dissolving simultaneously, much like memory itself.

In this painting, the waterfall becomes a central conduit—a vertical passage through darkness and density, an axis where clarity ruptures through obscurity. The drips, veils, and deposits of paint mimic the way recollection slips, accumulates, or floods unexpectedly. Light is not merely illumination but a force that exposes what lies beneath.

The landscapes in Passage are psychological terrains. They hold remnants of places I have known, but they are altered through the lens of introspection. They speak to the instability of memory, the friction between past and present, and the continual effort of moving through internal thresholds. I am interested in how an external scene can mirror an internal state—how the mind travels through its own weather.

Ultimately, the series explores how we carry the world within us, and how each passage—whether of time, loss, renewal, or recognition—reshapes our inner geography.

Artist Bio

Janet Elizabeth Thomas is a Sydney-based artist working across painting and sculpture. Her artistic career began in 1981 when she became assistant to renowned sculptor Nicholas Georgouras. In 1984, a portrait she painted of Georgouras was selected for the inaugural Salon des Refusés exhibition.
A visit to New York in 1982 exposed Thomas to the city's contemporary art scene and broadened her artistic vision. Her enduring interest in Greek culture, language, philosophy, and history later led her to complete a Bachelor of Arts at Macquarie University, majoring in Philosophy and Ancient History.
Thomas has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, including the Eddis Glastra Gallery, Paddington (1987), the Australian Museum's WIRES exhibition (1990), and Artists Against War at Casula Powerhouse (2004). She is listed in Max Germaine's Artists & Galleries of Australia.
Following the death of Nicholas Georgouras in 2020, Thomas began carving sculptures from the remnant marble left in his studio. Using Georgouras's direct carving technique, she creates works that unite painting and sculpture through the use of marble, pigment, egg tempera, and oil. Her practice explores transformation, memory, mythology, and the origins of human artistic expression. Through both sculpture and painting, Thomas seeks to create images that resonate with the collective unconscious and speak to enduring human experiences.

Commissions

J.E.'s studio is in Sydney