John Tomlinson is an artist based in New York who has focused on drawing throughout his career, exploring the flat line on paper as well as in digital video. Tomlinson’s work centers around the portrait as representative of self and other, invoking a French-infused semiotic process of association. The artist’s graphite drawings emerge out of random performative moments. Gesture and movement are captured while each composition portrays a vestige of personal experiences.

Signs Are Taken For Wonders (2012) features a singular face looking skyward toward another, small image of a figure walking through a door. Both images are framed by an expressive cloud of graphite that smears and clusters across a white polyester, film surface. Dark Memories Little Secrets (2012) shows a three-quarter portrait within a landscape distance while the foreground contains white, gray and black cloud forms. Beyond a splash of black pigment floats the profile of a standing nude, as a captured thought.

The context amplifies further in Je suis entré… (2012) where the portrait appears at the vortex of gestural intensity yet the subject casts his gaze to one side, diverting all tension to another miniaturized representation seen on the right. Escape From 164 (2012) represents a series of clashes coming from all angles, indicting the subject who gazes blankly out at the viewer along with the house in the lower right corner and the other figural representations that appear to the left, right and then upper right corner.

John Tomlinson has exhibited his work in an array of exhibitions throughout the country. In New York City his work has appeared at 55 Mercer, the Bronx Museum of Art and The Painting Center. From November 2008 to February 2009, the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center in Vermont included his portraits from the 1980s in a group show titled As Others See Us. In 2009 the artist received a one-person retrospective titled So Much to Say [not enough time] at the Alliance Gallery of the Delaware Valley Arts Center, located in Narrowsburg, New York. This particular exhibition featured paintings, drawings, motion drawing videos and sound works and was on view from June 12th through July 4th, coinciding with the opening of the 6th annual DIGit Media Arts Exposition.

In 2005 Tomlinson received a Fellowship for Visual Artists and Craftpersons from the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance. The artist is also a founding member of the DIGit Media Arts Exposition in Narrowsburg as well as the Barryville Area Arts Association and the Upper Delaware Preservation Coalition. In February 2013, John Tomlinson published a book of his recent work titled Dark Storms: A Drawing Series. His work is currently featured in a group exhibition titled I Am My World on view until March 31st at NOoSphere Arts located at 251 East Houston Street in New York City.