Self-portrait

[Grethe Angen]

Thomasin, this is so captivating. I have been studying it in depth with great admiration. It looks to me as the whole face is covered by a rubber- mask that can be pulled off by picking up the edge by her ear., and reveal her underlying soft skin. Most remarkable.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Marina, thank-you for your encouragement, and also to Alex. You are much too kind! It's very good to be appreciated by such intelligent artists as yourselves. Being here has gone a long way to keeping me going when nothing seems to ever go as I want it to.

Grethe, thank-you very much for your compliments. I am very flattered.

[Margaret Ferguson]

Hi, can I just add my congratulations to the comments already made. The new works on your website and just beautiful. How do you attain this luminosity of skin??
I'd love to know, the last time I saw skin portrayed like this it was on a Klimt painting in Vienna. I was taken aback by the difference from seeing it in life compared to books. The pearlescence was gorgeous, don't know if it was done through glazes

I would love to see your own work in an exhibition.

[Thomasin Dewhurst]

Margaret, thank-you very much. With the skin, I don't often use glazes because I don't really have the patience, but I do have a number of layers of paint from all the workings-out i do before I am finally satisfied. So that creates a kind of depth which is sometimes like polished precious stone i.e it looks as if you are seeing the colours and lines under a glass-like surface. You see the ghosts of earlier painted, partially destroyed, figures and that brings a mystery to the work, as if it were telling its own story and dictating my actions. I love it when I achieve that because I feel I am much freer from my clumsy self-conscious ideas - as though the painting itself has taken over the responsibility of its existence.