Cristy Thom


		Cristy Thom is the embodiment of contemporary art. She has been an artist her whole life; however, she did not always produce art as we see it today. It was in 1993 that she realized becoming a painter was the way for her to communicate with the world. The cliché that we all know so well, that of the “starving artist,” is a foreign concept to her. It never occurred to Cristy that most artists live in obscurity while taking on other types of work to “pay the bills.” To choose a path that is so alternative as a vehicle to positively impact the world is daring. All she can do is paint. Cristy has never held a “job”. From the ages of eighteen to twenty, however, she did have some involvement with work. She was a Playboy centerfold, the Snap-on tool girl, and a generic bathing-suit model. She was afforded the opportunity to travel the world as a result. This brief stint in the Hollywood scene also landed her a part in a low budget movie and some television commercials. Nothing to be proud of . . . . She is still a member of SAG. Prior to these two years of “work,” Cristy Thom was trapped in an odd world of “child-acting-as-adult” (that time when kids tend to think they are mature and equipped to make good decisions for themselves). She dropped out of school in the ninth grade, became the live-in girlfriend to a forty-one-year-old man, and ultimately became estranged from the normal life of a teenager. Cristy Thom was an object. Her physical self always seemed to take precedence over her mental self. It was only through painting that she began to communicate with her environment in an intellectual and abstract way. She graduated with a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design as one of the most ambitious and prolific painters in her class. She defined her own style and has refined that style into a compelling body of work in the years since college. The artist before you today has had a life time of experiences that seem to permeate into oil paint images. A keen eye for design and color coupled with serious life-lessons make for a visually compelling body of work. Cristy Thom’s life is only relevant as an illustration of the possibilities for transcendence. Cristy Thom, artist, can not be separated from her objet d’ art. To know one is to love the other. Her work is filled with as many dualities and contradictions as her life. She is an organized pack-rat that creates abstract photorealistic paintings. It is a process of filtering and reducing that produces a tantalizing moment on canvas. Flat and colorful. Resume - click here to view resume