Interview with artist Hollis Brown Thornton

Hollis Brown Thornton is an artist who keeps alive the classic drawing on paper using only his talent, acrylics, oils and permanent markers, currently merging them with the accurate precision of the computer. His art has a dominant touch of nostalgia, old and close to forgotten things that once were a significant part of our lives.

Aged Polaroid childhood pictures, floral wall papers, VHS cassettes, old posters are only a part of Hollis’ inspiration. Hollis was born and raised in Aiken, SC.  In 2001, he moved to Chicago.  He lived there 4 years, working as gallery director of Mongerson Galleries and installation assistant at Russell Bowman Art Advisory.  He returned to Aiken, SC in 2005, where he continues to live and work in a warehouse studio.

What was your starting point for your career as a designer ?

I suppose it officially started half way through my third year of college, I changed from studying business (I was planning to work at a family business) to art, with a focus on studio painting.

What is your educational background?

I graduated in 1999 the BFA University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC.

I’m sure you have worked on quite a few projects by now. What would be  the most relevant ones?

This piece from a few weeks ago is an attempt at translating my computer and paper work to oil on mid scale canvas.  I’m about to do another version of this painting with the wallpaper pattern transferred rather than painted.  And I have a feeling these two paintings are personal breakthrough paintings, another step in merging the precision of the computer work with the loose, dissipating nature of the painting.  And these breakthrough pieces are extremely important because they usually bring years of development together, successfully, for the first time.  They usually aren’t the greatest works and I can already see a number of potential improvements, but finally being able to technically pull something off is a great relief.

Can you name 3 designs from your portfolio you are most fond of?

This image of Chunk from the Goonies sums up the vanishing nature of memories, on a pop culture level, as well as how this movie, which was my favorite when I was a kid, changes now that I’m grown up.

One of the things I love about these VHS are the random nature of the movies, like Critters, a silly b-movie horror and Out of Africa, one of the greats, together on the same cassette.  But these drawings, in general, other people seem to have a strong connection with them, and that is a great feeling, to be able to do something every so often that has a broad appeal.

And this specific image was one of the first two erased photos I did in early 2008.  I sort of think of this image as my mascot.

Our readers would definitely love to know what materials, hardware and software you use when you create your designs?

On paper I use Prismacolor and Copic markers, tracing images I’ve prepared on the computer using a light box.  I have a step by step of the transfer process on my site (here) that gives a description of that process.  On canvas, I’ll either use an opaque projector to reproduce that image I’ll then paint in oil or acrylic.  With the oil, I use a lot of paint thinner and stand oil.  For the hard edge acrylic paintings, I use masking tape and cut out each color area with an xacto knife.  I also use dry wall sanding blocks with water on the surface of the acrylic paintings to control texture or make lower layers of paint visible, as well as giving it an overall washed down and eroded effect.

What are the things that inspire you? Can Name a few things you use for inspiration?

Cy Twombly, Peter Doig, Matthew Barney, Takashi Murakami, Basquiat, Born to Run, R.E.M.’s first 10 albums, Music Has the Right to Children, The Wonder Years, Svetlana Boym’s “The Future of Nostalgia”, 1980s style, Arrested Development, running, carrot juice, Ray-Ban Aviators with yellow lenses.

As for websites, probably my tumblr blog, going through that feed.  There is such a wide variety of people I follow.  And the Flickr feed, for the same reasons.  I like blogs where it is just artwork, no writing, just the images/music/videos chosen by people I know are on a similar wavelength as myself.

When you began your journey as a designer you probably had a few role models, would you name two of your favorite artists?

Cy Twombly has remained my favorite artist for a little over 10 years.  His paintings stay in a state of potential….. they have this self contained energy that never seems to go away.  I almost always imagine a person, not even really Twombly, maybe a caveman, at some point in history making marks on a wall, almost like graffiti, just making marks.  It seems very simple and almost juvenile, and they work on a more complex level, but I think his paintings developed a self awareness, of artwork instead of being this complete or finished object, being more about this individual that is compelled to make marks, to sort of justify their existence, as well as leaving a mark that will be there after they’re gone.

And Basquiat was another early influence.  I love his work, for many of the reasons I love Twombly’s, but Basquiats attitude is something I admire.  A lot like Ali, they had this confidence, they never seemed arrogant, but they both had this almost limitless determination.  That was something I latched on to early.

Designing has always its ups and downs, what is the most difficult problem you ever had to face as a designer?

The slow pace of development, filtering through a lot of influences and developing a conceptual foundation for what I was doing.  Art in general is this continuous development off art from the past.  Its just a long, drawn out process of trial and error before you get to something that has a sense of your own identity.  When you’re young, you want it to happen much faster than it does.

Looking a bit into the future, how do you think people will look at your designs in let’s say,  four years from now?

That is such a short amount of time, I imagine the exact same way they look at them today.  400 years from now, well that is something to think about, will people even know what these VHS cassettes are?  What other things do I use that, like reading Shakespeare, don’t make sense in the future?

What advice would you give to the newbie designers?

Work!!!!!  Almost everything comes out of work.  Even conceptual things, you’re limited by the media you’re working with, so your ideas are bound by what the materials can reasonably do.  Artwork itself is all about evolution, development, regression, progression.  If possible, try to work in the art business for a while, either at galleries or an auction house, to get an understanding of that end.  But in general, be uncompromising, do what you want to do because it is a self motivated career.  Be both practical and extremely ambitious.  And be prepared to make a lot of sacrifices.

What do you think your greatest achievement is so far?

Art is a tough career on a number of levels, so simply surviving is by far my greatest achievement.  Getting through the “emerging artist” stages is an enormous test.

I suppose your craft isn’t just work and no play. How much free time you have left in a week and how do you usually spend it?

Run, exercise, I watch a lot of movies, the property I live on is rather large and we have a decent sized garden, so I do a lot of outdoors work as well.

What is your favorite PC game and how many hours you spend playing it?

I’ve never played PC games, but I’d probably say the original Legend of Zelda was the game I spent the most time with.

I find this design very interesting . What was your drive to create it?

The erased images are meant to represent the fragmented/incomplete nature of memory.  I go into family photos and erase elements to break down the stability of that frozen moment in time.  In the overall idea of my work, the figures in the photos are meant to be the main characters in the story, the ones who come up with the larger themes that try to explain their environment. In this particular photo, the lines coming out of the figures are abstractions of thoughts, the figures interacting with or thinking about the things around them, and eventually coming up with the mythological and/or scientific explanations for the things going on in the world.