Tomas Spicer attended Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London receiving a BA in Fine Art in 2014 and is a current student at Goldsmiths University of London studying on the Masters of Fine Art program. 

 

His work materialises in many different forms – from painting to sculpture, drawing, photography, installation and performance. Much of Spicer’s work is conceptual, concerned with the nature of meaning and the difficulties that beset its communication. However, his recent works have taken a different approach. Moved more by affect, or an acknowledgement of feeling, than ideas or knowledge, Spicer has created works that respond to feeling without, at first, being shaped by specificity or meaning. 

 

The works are therefore abstract, the product of short, sometimes inexact, bursts of energy. They are experiments – in mark-making, in image manipulation, in recycling or altering materials; paint is rolled then rerolled, pictures torn, paper scrunched and stitched together. The results are gestural and loose. Occasionally rough. And each aims to demonstrate the scope – with only a few materials and basic techniques – of an affective visual language. 

 

At the same time, the foundations of each work draw them back to meaning. The paper is found or recycled; the pictures gathered over years, from different places, mining the life of the artist. Printing techniques recur, both old and new. The passage of time and the importance of sustainability are baked into these works. Each reflects something of the past, while pointing forwards towards an array of imagined futures.