Email: zach@zacharythornton.com
Location: Baltimore, Maryland

Represented by:

Timothy Yarger Fine Art
354 N Bedford Drive
Beverly Hills, California 90210
t: 310.278.4400
f: 310.278.6771
www.yargerfineart.com
info@yargerfineart.com

Stricoff Fine Art
564 W. 25th Street
New York, NY 10001
t: 212.219.3977
f: 212.219.3240
www.stricoff.com
info@stricoff.com

Artist Statement
I continue to find visual inspiration in the night: the eerie lighting, the silent trees and glowing houses, the looming darkness and quietly ominous solitude. The figures who appear in this ambiguous atmosphere embody a separate and private realm of internal conflict, a world within a world; revealing just enough of themselves to arouse curiosity, leaving the viewer to pursue their identity, situation, and purpose.

My technique is influenced by traditional painting, as well as by photography and film, the latter especially in its composition and drama.

Education
2001 B.F.A. Maryland Institute College of Art
1997 Calvert Hall College High School

Exhibitions
2010 Janine Bean Gallery, Berlin
2010 Thomas Punzman Gallery, marbella (málaga) spain
2010 Stricoff Fine Art, Chealsea, NYC
2010 Hot Art Fair, Basel, Switzerland
2009 Los Angeles Art Show, Los Angeles, CA
2008 First Gallery, Women's Life, Rome, Italy
2008 YARGER | STRAUSS Downtown Annex, Corpus Maximus, Los Angeles, CA
2008 Los Angeles Art Show, Los Angeles, CA
2007 Bridge Art Fair, Miami, FL
2007 Robert Lange Gallery, Charleston, SC
2007 The Creative Alliance, Baltimore, MD
2007 Towson Arts Collective, Suburbia Redefined, Towson, MD
2006 Maryland Art Place, Critics Residency Juried Exhibition, Baltimore, MD
2006 Gallery Francois, Annual Group Exhibition, Greenspring, MD
2005 Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts, Art Noir, Annapolis, MD
2005 Post Logic, New York, NY
2005 Maryland Art Place, Invitational Benefit Auction, Baltimore, MD
2005 Current Gallery, Black and White Meet Color, Baltimore, MD
2005 One World, Baltimore, MD
2004 Frameworks, Santa Barbara, CA
2004 Artscape, Baltimore, MD
2003 Waldorf School, Baltimore, Maryland
2003 MFA Circle Gallery, Jurors Choice, Annapolis, MD
2003 Angelfall Studios, Narrative Paintings, Baltimore, MD
2002 Sassafras Gallery, Baltimore, MD

Publications
2009 New American Paintings, Mid-Atlantic edition (No. 81)
2007 New American Paintings, Mid-Atlantic edition (No. 69)
2006 Exhibition Catalogue Cover, M.A.P. 20th Annual Critics' Residency Program
2006 Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, MD
2005 Baltimore City Paper, Baltimore, MD
2004 Projekt30.com, Online Jurried Exhibition, NY

Awards
2006 Baltimore City Individual Artist Grant
2005 Maryland State Arts Council Grant

Reviews and Press

Ann Maree Clark
July 2010 . suburban hyper-voyeur noir master

" Zachary Thornton works in an old-fashioned style of art making - a style that ‘rewards on many levels’. It’s the sort of work a person might actually ruminate on; consider both on its own terms as well as in its historical context. One might really enjoy it, even, draw pleasure from the act of looking at it, without having to glean most of that enjoyment from one’s own simultaneously smug and self-deprecating sense of humour or other demonstrations of general mental dexterity, as has been the case with much of the contemporary Art."

Baltimore Interview
January 2007 . www.BaltimoreInterview.com

"We learn that many of his compositions arise from combinations of photographs, one perhaps of a girlfriend, the other maybe taken years earlier, a photo of a house, which he then melds together on the canvas. He will also stage the photos he needs, positioning his subject under a streetlight on a summer night, say, which he then will bring back to the easel. "I'm looking for a kind of complexity," Zach says of this process, "a mix of feelings--happy, sinister--and a kind of mysteriousness. I like having three or four possibilities of what might be going on in the painting."

Baltimore Sun
January 2006 . Glenn McNatt

"Zachary Thornton's strikingly realistic paintings are inspired by memories of people from his past, who recall the uneasy urban denizens of Edward Hopper's paintings. His images have a startlingly lifelike quality that manages not only to convey the appearance of his subjects but also to suggest something of their psychological makeup."

Baltimore Sun
January 2005 . Glenn McNatt

"One of the show's standouts, painter Zachary Thornton, has produced a series of highly accomplished oil-on-canvas portraits that effectively convey something of their subjects' character as well as appearance. The sleek surfaces certainly demonstrate the artist's mastery of light, color and form, but what really makes them work is their startlingly life-like quality: You almost expect to see these people breathe."

Baltimore City Paper
November 2004 . Ned Oldham

"Nearly every piece in the opening show at Current, the choice new downtown gallery, holds its weight in a well-installed and inviting exhibit. Tall street-front windows and high ceilings give the space big-city curb appeal, and the collective of 15 artists who made a successful pitch to the Downtown Partnership for a six-month—and ultimately, one hopes, longer—stint in the city-owned location seem, for the most part, to have a strong sense of how best to exploit the space."

Dominating a rear side wall, Zachary Thornton’s life-sized oil-on-canvas portrait, “Rosie and Claire,” recalls the portraits of John Singer Sargent (and likewise, the American living-room version of family portraits in oil) in its composition, and Francisco Goya in its unflattering realism. In conveying a sense of unqualified humanity, “Rosie and Claire” succeeds.


Baltimore City Paper
January 2003 . Gadi Dechter

"Zachary Thornton's smaller studies of suburban subjects--simple houses, trees, parks--are lovingly detailed studies of the poignant geometry of a sagging roof or the shimmering cloud of color crowning an autumn tree. Even more affecting are the two larger portraits that accompany the landscapes. In his "self portrait", Thornton, a recent Maryland Institute College of Art graduate and high school art teacher, demonstrates a real sensitivity for self-portraiture, beautifully capturing the fragility of the human subject caught between the pose of examiner and examined."