“Jazz Combo” Series of Monotypes

Art Statement 2016 – 2019

By Thom Wright

Jazz inspires my print making.  It continues to be contemporary and vital, full of feeling and playful innovation that swings, bounces and stomps.  It captures mainstream America and the world today with a wide range of musical influences that began over 100 years ago. 

My “Jazz Series” builds on Modernist art that began over 100 years ago with Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Henri Matisse’s Cubist paintings of musicians and guitars and making music.  It continued in American art with Stuart Davis’ “Jazz” paintings where he combined hard-edged color shapes with textured backgrounds.   As in their abstract works and in jazz music, my monotypes try to communicate feelings and images through rhythmic lines, shapes, forms and colors, and orchestrate these parts into a visual whole.  In these works I focus on string instruments in asymmetrical still life arrangements, especially with the jazz guitar, which I enjoy playing as well.  Thus, my paintings are personal expressions of music that swings, bounces and stomps.