Thomas Jewell-Vitale

Thomas Jewell-Vitale, Professor Emeritus of Art at Loras College in Dubuque, Iowa, returned to his Alma Mater in 1976 almost a decade after leaving. He first pursed religious studies at Gregorian University in Rome, then studied figure drawing at Akademie der Bildenden Kunste in Vienna, and lastly, earned a BA and MA in Studio Art from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1995, he took a sabbatical post as Professor of English at Eichi University in Amagasaki, Japan. His art evolves from and adapts to a wide variety of local and international settings. A number of published articles and reviews refer to his work which hangs in major institutional collections including Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Aurora, Evanston, Cincinnati, Dayton, Milwaukee, Madison, St. Paul, Des Moines, and Dubuque as well as private collections.

Art Statement:
The story of one's artistic activity can’t be succinctly communicated in words as a whole but words are useful to illustrate the stopping points along the way that help convey the many different motives that go into making art. From time to time I have “analyzed” my work in the ways cited below but any given work itself contains more of the past, present, and future than I am consciously aware of or can capture in with a single statement.
• “I have seen handiwork of others that has inspired me to challenge myself in ways I never could have imagined. Inspiration comes in all forms. I know that what attracts me to some things and not others are the little glimpses of truth they contain. Sometimes truth comes in the awareness of things well made, other times, in the turn of a sincere phrase; most often, just a fragment will do to catapult an avalanche. Little gifts, embedded in all sorts of careful human production, revealed daily, are all I look forward to; such an elegantly subversive cosmic scheme that inspires others, bit by bit, to evolve into the change they will become”.
• “I am in love with the paint, troweling it on, pushing it around. Sometimes I think the paint is my actual subject matter and content all rolled up into one. My use of color even evolves from how I’m able to push paint around. By altering its viscosity I can let colors underneath reveal themselves and mix optically with those on top. It’s funny how the tail can wag the dog”.
• “In my paintings, the edges of shapes yield easily to the spaces around them. They create a variety of changing allegiances, sometimes becoming one thing, sometimes another. Like sleight of hand, shapes live hiding, nestling, drifting, absorbed, material and immaterial. In these paintings, the images often have no clean cut boundaries and I came to realize that intuitively, by avoiding them and by simulating light is how I have tried to replicate mystery”.
• “I keep edges of shapes indefinite so that one can pass into the next. Maybe it reveals my desire to have things both ways….