Rebecca Thompson discovered her talent for painting relatively late. Thankfully she did. Her almost dreamlike but brilliant oil paintings calm and excite at the same time. Her work has earned many awards and accolades and is in numerous prestigious corporate and private collections. Rebecca is represented by Cantrell Gallery in Little Rock, Greg Thompson Fine Art in Little Rock and Justus Fine Art Gallery in Hot Springs. Her work can also be viewed at her website rebeccathompson.net.

AAS: Rebecca, you are an Arkansas native and studied French before taking up painting full time – and were a gardener at the Governor’s Mansion! Was painting something you always did even before ‘taking it seriously’?

RT: Being able to paint was something I never even dreamed of. I thought that a gift for the arts was something you were born knowing you had. It wasn’t until in my fifties, when I left my job at the Governor’s Mansion and started a garden design business, that I took a drawing course at the Arkansas Arts Center. Much to my astonishment, I could draw—sort of. One could say I became obsessed, and a year later enrolled in the Arts Department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Being around the creative high energy of those young students was heady stuff.

“I never paint exactly what I see. Instead, I try to weave a moment from the explosion of patterns, colors, shapes and movement.”

AAS: I know you try to spend as much time as possible in Maine painting. I am sad to say I have never been to Maine, but it is on my travel wish list. What began the Maine connection?

RT: My love of Maine started about the same time. My husband, Reed, and I loved Boston. And after several trips there, we began to work our way up the coast. When we eventually crossed the bridge from the mainland over to Deer Isle, Maine, it was love at first visit. We eventually bought a house in the village. After my work was accepted in a gallery there, I began to meet regional artists. The house has a garage apartment that I loaned to people in the arts who were looking for a chance to run away from home for a while. It was a great experience for me. There were composers, singers, artists, playwrights, writers --and wine on the front porch. For three months every summer, my sweet, supportive husband stayed in Little Rock working while I had the time of my life. Although, to be fair, I was working too. The rules were that we all worked for 6 to 8 hours or so and then gathered on the porch to talk about our triumphs and challenges. It freed me to paint without distraction all day every day for three months.

AAS: Your landscapes are just gorgeous. Something about them – I can feel the breeze. They are never broody or ominous. I especially love Porch. It may not be a pure landscape, but I think of it as a place I really want to visit.

RT: The remark I hear most often about my landscapes is “I want to be there”. I like the challenge of pulling together the impressions and the reality of the scene. I never paint exactly what I see. Instead, I try to weave a moment from the explosion of patterns, colors, shapes and movement. Theory is always lurking, but it’s when I cross the line into the unconscious that things become magical for me.

AAS: What is it about plein air painting that you find so inspirational and satisfying?

RT: From childhood I always had rather be outside than in. I grew up in rural Arkansas and when I was a child people would drive up to my parents’ house and asked if they knew their little girl was out in the field alone with the cows. Well, the cows were by the creek, and that was where I wanted to be. It's still where I want to be – but maybe without the cows.

“There is never-ending drama in the landscape.”

AAS: Your landscapes have a very atmospheric quality using shades of white to create light and drama.

RT: I am interested in light and shadow and the movement of light. There is never-ending drama in the landscape. It is possible to sit in one place for hours and see dozens of variations of mood. My palette tends toward mid tones, reserving darks and lights for emphasis. I prefer oils because they are so fluid. I’m just not a straight-line kind of girl. I have tried the water-soluble paints and they can give very satisfying effects in the right hands. They just don’t work for me. I like to move back into my paintings, blending, reshaping just generally mooching around.

AAS: Let’s now talk about your figurative paintings. We own two – Supper’s on the Table and Fantasy in C Major. When we saw Supper’s on the Table we both saw our grandmothers standing on the back stoop in her housecoat in South Louisiana through the screen door, by the fig tree..etc…we knew it belonged to us. And, I fell in love with Fantasy in C Major as soon as I saw it. They are very different paintings, but each has your ‘mystery figure’ that you are, I think, known for.

RT: Supper’s on the Table is, I think and hope, a universal memory: that of a nurturing figure opening a door to a safe place. It was influenced by my memories of the women I knew while growing up in the rural South. My mystery figures really are mysteries — even to me. I love to capture moments of connection — between people, between people and their surroundings, between people and a moment of realization. I try to capture body language of someone caught unaware. Although I paint from actual encounters, the figures are not portraits. The faces change as the painting progresses. Sometimes I have to introduce myself to the final image.
 The Fantasy in C Major evolved from a glimpse of a young woman in an empty old house.  I could tell she was drawn to it and was perhaps fantasizing about the stories it held and her dream of what it could be. Her body language hinted at the beginning of a dance. One of my favorite pieces of music is Fantasy in C Major as played by Glenn Gould. It came to mind.

AAS: You have done some amazing still life paintings. Sun Stripes and Zinnias and Friend are so lovely.

RT: My approach to still life painting is much like that of my landscape paintings. It starts with shape and light. Very seldom do I “set up” a still life. Most often it is something that stops me in my tracks. My approach is pretty fluid. I don’t actually see the objects as objects. I see them as shapes and vessels for the movement of light and shadow.
Although I was the gardener at the Governor’s Mansion and owned a garden design company, I was never a Master Gardener. It came along too late for me. At that point, I thought I already knew it all! Flowers as subjects can be tricky. I am not a realism painter, and yet I want the flower to be identifiable. I like the challenge of subjects that are ever changing. As a flower ages, its contours change, the color mutates—like people—and the resulting image takes on new depths and meaning.

AAS: OK, so I have to ask: what is your fascination with chairs? You use them as wandering gnomes. Those paintings are so fun – and beautiful.

RT: Ah. Chairs. They are such a constant in our lives, yet few of us really notice them. They come in all sizes, shapes, and forms. We sit in them, we rest, grieve, celebrate, read, wait, relax, eat, gossip, watch movies and plays, daydream. They are reliable. And most of us have a favorite. They are the unsung heroes of our daily life. They don’t get around much, and I like to portray objects out of context. That was the source of my Road Trip series.

AAS: What do you call your style?

RT: I have been influenced by the post impressionists. Bonnard is one of my favorites. The Bay Area Figurative Movement, Elmer Bischoff in particular, is another important influence. And there are contemporary artists that inspire and inform me – not just painters, but performance artists, sculptors. YoYo Ma said, “Music is a physical force. It is energy". I believe that applies to all art forms. As to my style, I don’t have a label. It is just what I do.

“The flow of light is always fascinating, arresting, and elusive – something I and many others have struggled to understand.”

AAS: Do you work on several paintings at a time or do you rather start and finish one before starting another?

RT: I read three or four books at one time and work on at least that many paintings at one time. I find that work on one painting often informs the work on another – solves a problem or suggests a change.

AAS: You are actually in several group shows currently or that are about to happen (Cantrell Gallery and Justus Fine Art). I guess these will be online shows or by appointment, but if these were normal times, do you like attending shows?

RT: I do like attending my shows and the shows of others. I like seeing what other artists are up to. I like hearing the reactions to my work. What fascinates me is that four people can look at the same painting and each of them can have a different response. I do paint for myself in that I don’t worry about what will sell. But I also paint for others in that I hope what I do can give people an experience that moves them and perhaps changes the way they see.