Thomas Lawson
Sunny and Warm
Chez Max et Dorothea, Los Angeles
January 10 - March 22, 2025
Sunny and Warm is a solo exhibition featuring paintings and works on paper by Thomas Lawson. Spanning three decades, from 1994 to 2024, the exhibition showcases a selection of Lawson’s paintings and works on paper that illuminate his evolving exploration of allegory, public imagery, and personal narrative.
The title Sunny and Warm reflects a personal and introspective turn in Lawson’s practice. “For many years I have worked with public imagery, culling newspapers, magazines, websites for material that speaks to the moment,” Lawson explains. “But the frightening stupidity of the past eight or nine years has really gotten to me, and I found I no longer wanted to spend time in my studio thinking about another catastrophe. And then I came across a forgotten box of letters my mother wrote to her mother around the time I was born, and I began exploring her handwriting as a way to think about my life now.”
This exhibition highlights Lawson’s ability to navigate between cultural critique and personal storytelling, offering works that intertwine public and private histories. Sunny and Warm reflects Lawson’s enduring engagement with representation, appropriation, and narrative. Since his pivotal 1981 Artforum essay Last Exit: Painting—a critical call for the resurgence of painting as a vital artistic practice—Lawson has continued to push the boundaries of the medium, weaving fragments of history, culture, and memory into his work.
The New World Series, for instance, explores the interplay between image and ground, surface and depth. Inspired by Domenico Tiepolo’s mural depicting a procession of figures gazing toward a distant horizon, Lawson instead shifts focus to intricate surface patterns that pass over and through his figures. Some works in this series feature CalArts students as models, reflecting Lawson’s role as an educator and his ongoing interest in fractured cultural narratives.