Online gallery featuring art by Scottish abstract colourist Colin Thoms and London painter Sebastian Horsley. Art Links.
Colin Thoms
To view the full collection click on the link above. All sizes are in inches. For more information and pricing please contact : jeremythoms@aol.com or info@rolinc.co.uk
Gathered here in the Rol Gallery are examples of the art of Colin Thoms, the Scottish abstract colourist.
Colin Thoms was born in 1912, the son of an Edinburgh lawyer. He gained his diploma from Edinburgh College Of Art in 1933, where he was taught by S.J.Peploe, W.G. Gillies and D.M.Sutherland
He spent one term in London at the Slade under Randolph Schwabe, before taking up two successive travelling scholarships, in 1935 to Paris, Florence, Rome, Padua and Venice and in 1936 to Brussels, Cologne and Munich.On his return, he did a first class certificate in 1937, under David Talbot Rice. He then began his
teaching career, which, as art master at Loretto School, Musselburgh.
From 1940 until 1946 he served in the Royal Artillery and the Education Corps, spending the last year in Egypt and Palestine. After the war, he returned to Loretto on condition that every boy in the school was taught art in some form. In 1949, he was elected President of the Society of Scottish Artists. In 1951, he was appointed lecturer at Gray's School Of Art, Aberdeen, where he remained until his retirement in 1977. He was President of Aberdeen Artists Society from 1966 - 1970 and of Aberdeen Civic Society.
In 1963, he was inspired by the major Miro retrospective exhibition in London. This changed his painting style irrevocably; he embraced the challenge of abstraction with enthusiasm. He was one of a generation
of Scottish artists like Gear, Johnstone and Davie who moved easily into abstraction: he developed an exuberant personal style which exploited his gifts - his bold colour sense, sure line, imaginative compositions
and sense of humour.
After his retirement, he had more time to work producing oils, collage, watercolours, pastels and, a new development, printmaking, first at Peacock Printmakers in Aberdeen and, from 1990, at Edinburgh Printmakers Workshop. He exhibited regularly at the Royal Scottish Academy, the Society of Scottish Artists and Aberdeen
Artists Society with one-man shows in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, London, Stirling, Stromness and Haddington.
His work is represented in collections including the Scottish Arts Council, Aberdeen Art Gallery, Kirkcaldy Art Gallery, Edinburgh City Arts Centre and Robert Fleming and Co. in London as well as many private collections around the world.
Sebastian Horsley
Horsley's work is as he is,'the self', expressed through a medium referred to as painting. There are those who feel he takes things to extremes but that is up to the onlooker. Sebastian is an artist/writer who feels that unless one takes things to the very edge and stares hard into the abyss then do we really ever truly feel alive?. He first achieved notoriety as a student when he was thrown out of St Martin's School of Art for forging a document to gain a grant.