Thomas Compton - Ferrara Evening Ball

Thomas Compton (b.1996. UK) is an artist, printmaker and illustrator currently studying at the Royal College of Art, originally from Petworth, West Sussex. His practice is the culmination of both digital and analogue methods. His approach to image-making explores sets of chosen subjects through research and drafting periods, positioning the subject within an aesthetic framework. This process acts as a vehicle to create conscientious responses to the subject. Influences are the legacy and future of folk customs, myth and legend, the ethos of the Arts & Crafts movement, industry, materiality and the philosophies/histories of printing processes, among others

The three prints in this series are impressions made from the artist’s graphic novel ‘The De Chirico Horse’. In 1927, Thomas’ great-grandfather Hugh Compton travelled from England to Italy as a young man. He would stay here for several years, where upon his return he had acquired fluent Italian and a miniature carving of a wooden horse. This, it would turn out was a gift from the metaphysical artist. The novel’s narrative and the resultant prints weave the known and the fictional, touching on themes of provenance and the nature of story to degrade and/or evolve through authorship. Incongruent and anonymous figures move through seemingly boundless dreamscapes, sometimes tracing the heels of a horse. There is something consecrating in creating this vignette as it surmises the aura of the carving relative to the artist’s encounters with it and ruminated family accounts.

Image for illustration purposes only, artwork supplied unframed