Brief Biography and Artist Statement

Stuart Thompson, Professor of Art Emeritus, Seton Hill University, divides his time between clay work and oil painting. He has a B.S. from Edinboro University and M.S. and Ph.D. from Penn State University, all in the field of art education. He taught art at the high school and university levels for 37 years. He is also a retired Captain in the U.S. Navy, having spent 21 years with the Naval Reserve. He holds two Vietnam Service Medals and the Republic of Vietnam Unit Citation.

Thompson’s work is frequently shown in regional juried and invitational exhibitions. Generally, his painting, while representational, sometimes asks the viewer to reconsider the first impression. An example would be a 72 x 54” oil on canvas titled Reality Comes and Goes, awarded Best of Show in a Southwestern PA Council for the Arts sponsored exhibition. Here, fully fleshed-out mountainside rocks and trees give way to bare-bones underpainting. His wheel-thrown clay work tends toward the classic form, preferring the quiet statement over the brash, and is influenced by Ming Chinese, Scandinavian, and early U.S. potters such as Charles Binns. The glaze work on occasion will be a bit more adventurous, combining vibrant background color with strong splashes of accent color. Thompson sometimes teams up with his wife, Nora, a very successful artist in her own right, to execute ceramic work: he throws the form, Nora applies whimsical “monster” images in underglaze, he then final glazes and fires the form. 

Both Stuart and Nora are authors of books, Stuart’s being To My Daughter: Stuff I’ve Learned While Playing Outside, an illustrated look at life lessons learned while hiking, caving, and rock climbing, and Nora’s being Twisted: Tales to Rot Your Brain, a collection of short stories and images of a mildly disturbing sort. 

He and Nora often hike and rail-to-trail cycle, locally, on the Appalachian Trail, and in Acadia National Park. 

He maintains a studio with his wife near Latrobe, PA.