a large scale wall work at the Art Gallery of Ontario during the Frank Gehry renovation
Denyse Thomasos

Art and Art History Presents - Denyse Thomasos

Thursday 3 February 2022 from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

To join click on the Zoom link below:
https://sheridancollege.zoom.us/j/97294428855?pwd=M21Ka0daSFZ2V0JoMWdEZ1BubytXQT09

In celebration of Black History Month, we will screen a recording of a March 2011 artist talk given at Sheridan by 1987 Art and Art History graduate Denyse Thomasos (1964-2012). The Art Gallery of Ontario will host a retrospective exhibition of Denyse's work in fall 2022.  

Denyse Thomasos built an international reputation as an abstract painter working with architectural structures recording and examining political and social conditions from slavery to modern day war and genocide. She worked with both handpainted gestural forms and digital imagery. Much of her formal constructions are based on her visual research gathered during her travels to Asia, Mali and Peru.

Thomasos was born in Trinidad and grew up in Toronto; in 1983, she began her studies in the joint Sheridan College and University of Toronto Mississauga Art and Art History Program, graduating in 1987. Thomasos lived and worked in the East Village, New York City with her husband and daughter. She is represented by Lennon, Weinberg (Chelsea) and the Olga Korper Gallery (Toronto). Thomasos had a number of solo exhibitions and was reviewed in many national and international publications including Artforum, Art in America, Canadian Art, The Globe and Mail and The New York Times. She won numerous awards and artist residencies including the following: Guggenheim Fellowship (1997), PEW Fellowship (1995), Bellagio residency (2001), Yaddo Residency,  Joan Mitchell Award (1998) and NYFA (2008). More recently, Thomasos was named the first recipient of the McMillan/Stewart Award, recognizing unique and outstanding contributions made by women artists.

In 2005, Thomasos completed Hybrid Nations (reproduced above), a large-­-scale wall work at the Art Gallery of Ontario during the Frank Gehry renovation. Her last exhibition before her unexpected death in 2012 was a wall work titled Kingdom Come at the Oakville Galleries (Toronto) September 2011, which she created with the assistance of Art and Art History student volunteers.