Eli Thorne
Rescue Snake Over Many Waves, 2020

oil, oil pastel, charcoal on canvas
48”H x 48”W

ARTWORK STATEMENT:

Eli Thorne’s paintings represent a rich imaginative world filled with symbols and allegory that incorporate both autobiographical and fabricated narratives. Using his personal experiences as a trans man, his work explores the notion of a lost boyhood, expressing regrets, fears, and nostalgia for a time in his life he never had. Here is a scene of a raging ocean, destroying a boat dock, a menacing but love filled snake comes to the rescue of a boy who does not exist. Powerful animals and emblems of contemporary trans life all occupy a fantastical space. The composition of this painting was driven by intuition rather than logic and evoked sentiments of love, tenderness, death, energy, force, and power all at once. Thorne’s paintings are part of a body of work that are representative of Thorne’s psychological and spiritual process of reconciling what his own boyhood could have been.

Artist Bio:

Eli Thorne is a newly Joshua Tree based artist. After living and coming of age in The Bay Area. He was born in Harrogate, England, and raised in Santa Cruz, California. He received his BFA from UC Berkeley. Later received his MFA from Mills College. As a trans male, his work aims to reconcile and negotiate his own sense of and relationship to manhood. His current paintings are representative of his psychological and spiritual process of imagining what his own boyhood could have been.