* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
Thomas Ascott is a painter based in South Florida.
Thomas explains his work by saying, “Inspiration, for me, is just my accumulated experiences, things I’ve seen, heard, touched and felt through my life, jumbled about in my mind and abused by time until they show up on a piece of paper. I would love to point to a sketchbook of ordered images that would tell this story, but, as often as not, the images are spit out on scraps of envelopes near a computer or a convenient napkin ringed with coffee. Growing up in East Tennessee, I spent a great deal of my childhood wandering through the Smokies, especially the Chimneys Picnic Grounds on the Little Pigeon River. I passed many hours of many summers scrambling over rocks in the middle of streams and exploring caves and trails. The Smoky Mountains and the Little Pigeon River are the internal background to almost all of my work. No matter what the central element of a piece may be, the natural flora and fauna of the Smokies creeps in, whether in the obvious form of a Smoky Mountain songbird or salamander, or in the less obvious form of rhododendron leaves and lichen-covered boulders.”
