Zachary Thornton

Gallery Affiliations: C. Grimaldis Gallery, Thomas Punzmann Fine Arts

Region: South

The paintings in my Night series are exterior scenes set in the midst of anonymous, silent streets illuminated by the isolated lights of the nocturnal world that turn otherwise ordinary moments into mysterious and provocative tableaux.

I explore the unique effects of this charged atmosphere in order to create images that are ambiguous in narrative content and invoke complex emotional responses.

I wish for my paintings to go beyond (or beneath) the surface drama of the scenes depicted to reveal, half-lit, a private realm of experience. Surrounded by sheltering trees and glowing houses against a looming darkness at once ominous and reassuring, the solitary figures of young women encounter the promises and hazards of the night, and the viewer in turn encounters them.