BIO
BORN
1976 - Aiken, SC
EDUCATION
1999 - BFA, University of South Carolina
SELECT CLIENTS
The New Yorker, Netflix, Vice Magazine, Urban Outfitters, Marc O’Polo, Square Enix, Society6, Columbia University Press, in4mation, FM-84
Hollis Brown Thornton is an American artist known for his paintings, drawings, and prints that explore the themes of memory, change, and the passage of time. Born in 1976 in Aiken, SC, Thornton earned his BFA from the University of South Carolina in 1999. He moved to Chicago, IL in 2001 and returned to Aiken in 2005, where he has since been working out of his warehouse studio. His style is characterized by the use of acrylic and oil paint, permanent markers, and a pigment transfer print process he developed over several years.
His work is built on themes of memory, nostalgia, fragmentation, and the temporary nature of our surroundings. Thornton frequently depicts outdated media - VHS tapes, cassettes, personal computers - alongside family photos and vintage pop culture imagery, making use of erasure, pixelation, pigment transfers, acrylics, and markers to evoke the imperfections of human recollection and the fleeting nature of human experience. His art has been featured in various exhibitions, publications, and collections, including The New Yorker, Netflix, and Vice Magazine. With a career spanning over two decades, Hollis Brown Thornton continues to produce work that invites viewers to reflect on the transience of life and memory.
INTENT
I paint and draw the way memory stores and replicates things in an inaccurate, personal way. In my work, erasure, fragmentation and simplification represent the imperfect, limited nature of memory and the constant notion of flux in the physical and digital world. I want to replicate the transitional state between the past and the unknown and focus on the idea of being in a perpetual state of potential.
The idea of being in a state of potential, whether it be great expectations or inescapable fear or a mixture of both, is my main focus. I erase identities from old photos, leaving fragmented images of these ghosts. I occasionally pixelate images, representing the simplified way the past exists in my mind. I occasionally put these things in empty rooms, representing these spaces of transition, isolation, and order. I wanted to be an architect when I was young. I find comfort in order and I suppose putting these memories into pictures is a type of tangible order. I draw these skeletons over and over, repeating like stars over the shoulder of Orion. Or a favorite song on repeat. Repetition feels like the overwhelming nature of the things I've seen. The unknown feels like the flux of now and what happens next.
A selection of EXHIBITIONS.
A detailed step by step of my PIGMENT TRANSFER PRINTMAKING PROCESS.
