Thompson Brennan

My new work is titled “Solastalgia Story”. Solastalgia was coined to describe a feeling of displacement from one’s own home environment. The word referred to those who have experienced a radical change in the eco-environment: loss of glaciers, for example, to a community of people living exclusively in the high Andes. I have co-opted the word to describe a feeling of displacement from our sense of psychological place due to world-wide behavioural changes we all must make because of Covid. Our home – the planet Earth- no longer feels familiar. Thirty two individual paintings represent a wide ethnic, stylistic, historic and expressive range of individual people meant to tie us together despite our differences. Due to limitations in face to face contact, the images are inspired by art history, photography, some live drawing and artistic imaginative license. The series began on March 8 and was completed on May 10. Larger portraits and a variety of other work followed.

Thompson Brennan was born in San Francisco, California and has lived in Beirut, Lebanon, New York, Virginia, Maine, Montreal and Seattle before immigrating to Canada in 2005. He studied art at the Corcoran College of Art+ Design, Washington, D.C. and was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Grant for painting. His work is included in more than thirty public collections and over seventy-five private collections in Canada, the U.S. and abroad.

“Art is philosophy with your hands” “All art making is a conceptual act” “