Art Beat: Beauty beyond meaning in Pat Coomey Thornton's 'Moment to Moment'

In a statement that serves as an astute introduction for those unfamiliar with the artwork of Pat Coomey Thornton, currently on display in the UMass Dartmouth University Gallery, Lasse Antonsen (the former long term director of said gallery) wrote  that  “Each of the paintings presents its own theater, its own performance space.”

I believe that Antonsen and I are simpatico in that kind of observation of her work. Writing about “Blossoms,” a painting in the exhibition that I’d seen previously elsewhere, I noted that Thornton had “created a tightly choreographed visual dance.”

Antonsen’s use of the word “theater” is apt to describe Thornton’s paintings. There is a clearly defined stage, there is backdrop, there are images and shapes that can be understood as sets, props, shadows and cast light, perhaps even character studies.

The paintings (roughly like an equal number of oil on canvas or gouache on Fabriano paper) date back to 2011. The vast majority of those resonate with a kind of quiet recurrent determination that subtly suggests that something deeper resides within these abstractions of curving lines, botanical allusions, fractured landscapes, vivid color and complex patternings.

“Closer Look,” from 2013, appears as a satellite view of an imaginary nightmare megalopolis, with exit and entrance ramps, main roads, cross streets, dead ends and culs-de- sac. All are rendered in vibrant hues: tangerine, blood red, acidic yellow and Pepto-Bismol pink.

Many of Thornton’s paintings have shapes and forms that suggest flower petals, leaves, and similar forms and there is meaning beyond beauty, as there is beauty beyond meaning.

Looking at Thornton’s latest paintings, particularly those from 2021 to the present, I took particular notice not only of particular visual cues but also of the titles, many which reverberated with the possibility of deeply entrenched emotion.

As I stared at a painting called “Scenario,” much of it a series of intersectional horizontal and vertical aquamarine blue lines, held in check by short bold strokes of orange and yellow, and thick stripes of bright green on the top and bottom of the canvas, I wondered about the title. One definition of scenario is “possible situation.”

There is a dark spire-like shape that rises from the lower left side of the painting. Another interpretation of that shape might suggest a canoe or similar craft. And then it occurred to me that it was about John, the artist’s late husband, who died in 2021. He was an avid kayaker.

Perhaps, the morass of blue was water to be traversed in that kayak, the strips of green representing one reality and the next. Boats play heavily in world mythology in regard to the transition from life to death, from Viking funeral pyres to the ferryman Charon of Greek legend transporting souls across the River Styx to the Underworld.

And then, there is Thornton’s latest painting, “Four Stages Plus One,” started in 2022 and completed earlier this month. The work is masterfully executed, with five great bands of differing hues, stacked one over the other. Over these distinct demarcations are once again flowery, wispy shapes, rendered in white, pink, cornflower blue and red.

I thought I had the title figured out. It had to be a tribute to John, referencing the five stages of grief outlined in Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s 1969 book “On Death and Dying”: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

But I wasn’t sure. So I reached out to the source. I did what I rarely ever do — reach out to an artist that I am writing an art criticism about — but journalistic ethics be damned. This needed to be right. I called Thornton.

It was a good conversation. And she certainly understood my thought process. But it wasn’t about John.

The painting was about her. Thornton has Stage 5 metastatic breast cancer. That’s the four stages plus one. But fear not: her prognosis is good. She’s still painting. And she will continue painting.

And she spoke about all those flowers and how they are indicators of life affirmation, symbols of love, from a high school boy’s corsage at a prom to the bouquet of a bride, holiday gifts, get wells to the sick and injured and to those placed at the gravestone of the departed.

It’s all good. Moment to moment, for all eternity.

“Pat Coomey Thornton- Moment to Moment” is on display at the UMass Dartmouth University Art Gallery, 715 Purchase St., New Bedford, until March 9.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Pat Coomey Thornton "Moment to Moment" at UMD Art Gallery