Thomas Dillon, individuality and action

Madrid,

Before painter, Thomas Dillon was a musician and writer and, in his first steps in the plastic arts, he has adopted processes, ways of doing, that these disciplines can have in common: automatism, creation from intuition and not from the conscious gesture.

Born in 1986 in New York and resident in Philadelphia, this author premieres at the Madrid Opera Gallery headquarters with a sample, “Body Work”, which contains his most recent works: large format compositions, abstract from a certain distance, but partially figurative in a more detained look, by containing forms that can be interpreted as characters and that, in turn, alludes to thoughts and emotions more or less emotions and emotions ephemeral.

The title of the exhibition, which plays with the usual expression in the cultural sphere to refer to the production of an artist (Body of Work), he points, however, the therapeutic procedures that seek body healing from their manipulation. Interested in meditation and spiritual experiences, Dillon first conceives the exercise of painting as a self -realization tool and the workshop as a place where this growth path is developed: I see the study as a safe space in which to experience a whole range of emotions. It doesn’t matter if it is uncomfortable, provided it comes from a true feeling.

The work with the body, in parallel to slow observation, are for this author necessary for their final creations to end up materializing, but those finished fruits do not prevail with respect to the previous stages. And where appropriate, these consist of pouring, throwing and applying on the fabrics of acrylic paint according to a caleidoscopic palette.

His physical perspective of painting, which obviously nourishes the automatisms of the Action Paintingit does not prevent you from using instruments for spilling beyond cubes, from Chinese sticks to syringes. From them the splashes and veins that surround their penetrating eyes in their canvases arise.

Thus, in Retrocausaly (2025), a blue background is covered with overlapping layers of spots and stripes, using the titanium target and the live green to intense crimson. Two looks seem to converge in this image, while a mass without yellow paint interacts with black drops, articulating a kind of torso in motion.

It is common for Dillon’s compositions with more than one figure to be directed towards abstraction thanks to overlap and dynamism. However, his works centered on a single figure transmit a greater sense of introsity and introspection; We see it in The Chad (2024), which represents the profile of a sharp nose man and green eyes, whose expression places him between contemplation and restlessness.

Dillon tries to confer some individuality to the ambiguous and gestural figures of their paintings without using literal or iconographic references, cartoons or symbols. In his words, The characters have different levels of emotional state. None of them face the viewer as a threat, but are ambiguous enough for the viewer to attribute their own meaning.