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William Kelly Thorndike

Artist Statements

2022

July 2022

Homer taught me to paint the entire story into the negative space on a cover idea, say it without showing it ... make the subject The Strange At-tractor …
 
Andrew Wyeth gave me the absurd permission to paint the place that I am from ... "Paint what you know." 
 
And so is your treatment of the muse.
 
... it helps them talk.

August 2022

I was a trained observer and working artist before I ever set foot in the Sunni Triangle Iraq 2004, with the Maine Army National Guard. 
 
Having that onboard knowledge of how to arrange paintings, was very helpful when I came home to Maine from a war with a traumatic brain injury, and other post combat realities. 
 
One of those realities being; why did I paint at all before we left for war?
 
The war had taken the (why) a person makes art away from me and so much more. Once home, I made art in a cognitive fog in my attempts to put the war trauma behind me. That never hap-pened, instead, I learned to put the war in front of me for the sake of others with my art. I found the reasons to paint hiding there in plain view.
 
It was hard, but I did it. 
 
I want my work to represent to others the importance of activat-ing their own creative process, from where they are in the Now, with what they have to work with, and for their own very im-portant reasoning. 
 
Truth: A fully activated creative process has a sharable wellness component, with measurable beneficial results for the human condition
 
Make your art, tell your story.

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