James Ayers & Barry Thomas: Conversance
Canyon Contemporary Artist Reception
James Ayers & Barry Thomas Conversance
Friday, October 10th from 5-7pm join us for an evening with
contemporary art painters James Ayers and Barry Thomas
featuring lively artist discussions, new artworks, live music,
& cocktails by As Above, So Below Distillery.
About James Ayers
James Ayers is an American contemporary figurative and landscape painter. He graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1991. His passion for travel has brought him to many parts of the world. From Native America to urban America, Africa’s Great Rift Valley to numerous European countries. Most of his previous paintings have been of indigenous people and their lifeways, however, Ayers' new work is inspired by the landscape, urbanscape, and portrait.
Years of exploration and observation have allowed James’ new art to be experimental, contemporary, and rooted in his formal training techniques. Through the process of connecting with the subject matter, he aims to make an emotional connection and convey that connection on the canvas.
“It's the act of creating a painting that excites me, scraping, pushing, and pulling the paint on the canvas. I really like seeing people get lost in those textures and layers as if they’re daydreaming.”
Since the mid-1990s, Ayers has worked as a fine artist and has traveled the globe with an inspirational outlook on beauty and culture. Ayers maintains a studio in N. Scottsdale, AZ, and regularly participates in gallery shows and art events earning numerous awards and accolades. His work is featured in several American museum collections.
James is often asked about his heritage. He was adopted by a Greek-American family, he is a mixture of German, Welsh, and African American, perhaps setting the stage for his unique versatility and world perspective.
James Ayers works in oils, layering thick impasto paint with palette knives, brushes, and brayer rollers. To give depth and movement to the image, he uses techniques such as scumbling (dragging paint with a brush across the canvas), sgraffito (scratching out wet paint to expose the underpaint colors), splattering, and intentional drips of paint. Ayers often applies graphite and crayon atop the finished work to amplify the visual impact.
The secret to his work, though, is the balance of planning and execution with a playful openness to unconventional approaches. All colors, shapes, and textures have a purpose and work together to create something intentional. Leave out something critical, and a piece falls flat. Add something extraneous, and the viewing becomes an inauthentic experience. Ultimately it’s the unrestrained freedom that allows Ayers to elevate his paintings with energy and spirit. https://www.canyoncontemporary.com/artist/james-ayers
About Barry Thomas
Authenticity brings value to creating artwork. I’m trying to find my own integrity through the Truth of the landscape. The individual is secondary to the Place, which holds a universal spirituality of which the individual is interacting. These motivations are the essence of what I try to experience as a painter. The experience is transcendent, as I pull away from my own motivations and enjoy the qualities of morning and evening light or the shadow play that creates great compositions. I express the paint with warm and cool color relationships, which can often be so unexpected. As an artist interacting with Nature, I get into the studio, where I learn a new way of expressing with every canvas. With 43 years of painting, I’ve learned to paint with the paint itself as an intimate relationship in and of itself. The brush is secondary to that spiritual truth, as am I, the individual. I get out of the way of the process and learn to simply react emotionally. I want to get in and out, not to destroy the freshness. The relationship you have should be the truth. It results in a real nice presence. A painting is a relationship to a truth. Van Gogh said something when he was in Paris when he learned how to paint with Manet and Degas he said I want to go to the South of France who have their hands in the earth and are connected to God. Colorado and Arkansas are rural and I can enjoy the quietude of the landscape and the people of the country. I can be understanding of that as a truth and principal of nature.
Throughout my path I have sought a different kind of light, to have a different kind of power and authenticity. One of my largest influence of painters are from Russian expressionism – the power of the brush work. Large figures, sunlight and shadows. Light is spirituality. Without light you have nothing, just darkness. Shadow creates drama. Beautiful output takes incredible input light physical health and well being, the people you surround yourself with and your spirituality. Spirituality flows through the brushwork.
Art was my escape as a young person and I’m academically trained at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. I worked as an illustrator in Los Angelis for Disney and other Hollywood and learned design and production qualities. It was a great training ground for building confidence and drawing skills, so that I can truly have that reactionary response. I have always loved horses and would ride on big ranches in Colorado and through my team roping days I would get into the biggest ranches in America. I was on cattle drives and go from town to town across the panhandle of Oklahoma and pushed cattle. This experience allows a visceral understanding of how to paint the feeling of the horse, the terrain, and the intimacy of the experience. My vibration is less important than the vibration of the landscape and the animals – they are in control. Painting the experience of this is so exciting and creates a true energy. I feel I am called to bring the art to the people; to be in great presence of intention and to be by myself a lot so that my work has the ability to lift the human spirit to a higher realm of enlightenment. https://www.canyoncontemporary.com/artist/barry-thomas