It's always special when Bills Legends make Buffalo home and pour into the community they are part of, whether that's helping others or bringing people together. Patti Thomas, wife of Buffalo Bills Hall of Famer Thurman Thomas, is connecting people through art. She has an exciting project that will be revealed on Friday, September 10.
The project being unveiled is a collection of paintings titled The Ghost: Paintings by Patti Thomas at Burchfield Penney Art Center. The exhibit will be on display for the public to view from Friday, September 10 to Sunday, October 17.
Thomas' idea to begin painting started during the pandemic when everyone had time at home to try out new hobbies.
Creativity and humor have always been part of Patti Thomas' character. But the stasis of the pandemic coupled with encouragement from a friend pushed the artist to try her hand at painting, opening the floodgates to a new mode of creative output. The Ghost: Paintings by Patti Thomas, features artworks created over the past year of this expression.
Utilizing language, irony, and absurdist, surreal figurations, the featured paintings offer fantastical commentaries rooted in random, whimsical, social events, thoughts, and situations. The works humorously deconstruct identities and the layers that exist within them as Thomas utilizes an intuitive, stream of consciousness approach to her process.
The collection full of shapes, figures and colors serves as a look into her independent self.
The embrace of the various parts of ourselves is reflected conceptually, as well as through the artist's own artistic journey. Her introduction to the art scene under the pseudonym The Ghost represents a journey of self-discovery separate from another part of her identity as the proud wife of Buffalo Bills Hall of Famer Thurman Thomas. As these two worlds for Thomas continue to grow and blend, it reminds us that the disparate parts that make us who we are do not exist in a vacuum. In embracing this truth while breaking down the assumptions we are all guilty of making off first appearances, we create room for understanding and empathy around more than what meets the eye.
To check out what The Ghost: Paintings by Patti Thomas looks like, click here. For visitor information, click here.
