GEOFF THORNLEY – measure of.
We sit here stranded, though we’re all doin’ our best to deny it.
Bob Dylan
Splendid Isolation:
The title of Geoff Thornley’s new body of paintings is “measure of.” This new title is, like the painter himself has long been, quietly enigmatic. It is not the leading description most folk yearn for with titles – rather it suggests we complete it – as the viewer completes the experience of the painting.
Thornley’s studio is situated on the lower north shore of the Waitemata Harbour. Emma and I almost always approach it by water – what better way to break the overload of urban sensory stimuli in preparation for being quietly with his paintings? Our approach by sea, together with the complex, archipelago-like nature of the Waitemata Harbour, gives one the sense we are sailing towards an island. As we seldom drive to Devonport, I’ve contented myself with this illusion. The Dylan quote isn’t really supposed to suggest that Geoff himself feels stranded in and by this antipodean version of Arcadia, however with great distance must inevitably come some isolation. I have long maintained that this distance is as much a psychological state as it is a geographical one, but then this might just be me doing my level best to deny it.
And so to measure of., Any traces of austere formalism have been cast aside. A softer sliding grid remains and moves across the picture plane, but its geometry is less overtly structural, more organic and certainly doesn’t feel imposed. Indeed the grid feels like a lattice of shadows – simultaneously veiling and altering the tone of the pigments, revealing the body of the painting perhaps more than ever before. In this sense it remains functional but subject to a more visceral sensibility
Thus the tooth of the linen is more evident. Where the properties of the weave might’ve previously been sublimated by the accumulation of pigment, in measure of., we can sense… almost hear the progress of the brush across the surface – a contest between the pigment and the linen, between openness and resistance.
Resistance is a word that comes up for me, time and again with Geoff Thornley’s works. It feels as if it exists deep in the constitution of the work and as I implied earlier, in Thornley himself. It is a quality that I respect a great deal and yet I know brings with it a certain friction. This friction is partly what gives the works such traction. Even the evident sensuality in Thornley’s paintings is not there with an eye to seducing us. It emerges in the substance of the painting despite the ferment and unrest that sits at the heart of his images of transience.
As previously suggested, I came to Thornley’s work late. And whilst it is too obvious or cliched to say, “better late than never,” it is true.
To find painting with this level of veracity, given the theatre and posturing that is a lamentable feature of our times, well it feels like inadvertently kicking and unearthing a precious remnant. I sometimes feel as if I metaphorically stubbed my toe on Thornley. His abstraction, not just in New Zealand, but especially there, is a philosophical counterpoint to the imported mannerisms of many of his contemporaries.
Thornley has maintained an utterly resolute position from the lower shores of the Waitemata. Yes, he’s guarded by New Zealand’s naval fleet, but these paintings have never been about seeking safety or comfort. Rather, they like him, prefer to face into the prevailing wind, sharing only occasionally in Dylan’s isolationist sentiment and largely accepting the challenges of distance as a gift.
Andrew Jensen, April 2024
