Born out of tacit knowledge of a lifelong clinical (or verbal) stutter and learnt knowledge of a critical (or scholarly) stutter, key to Tom’s painting practice is coming to understand and explore how a stuttering-thinking and a visual-stuttering can act as a stimulating and creatively productive mode of painting – and thinking about painting. In other words, how knowledge can be gained through the act of painting when viewed from the prism of alternative (or disruptive) forms of dialogue. In parallel to this area of interest is an underlying curiosity in painting’s invitation for us to wonder what we could possibly see in, or with, thanks to a picture.

Putting into words what a painting practice is aiming to resolve is an oblique process. (Is resolution for a painting practice a necessary or beneficial aim?). Tom submits that the act of painting is an act of searching for the inarticulable; it is an act driven by curiosity; it is a physical and visual manifestation of an inarticulable leap of faith. With that in mind, his practice’s core through-line lies within the relationships between language, vision, the act of painting, the stuff of paint, and art history.

Emerging out of his practice-led PhD research is the recognition of a painting’s and a stutter’s alliance – specifically in their shared dissent of time’s perceived linearity. For example, it is in their nature to loop time, expand and contract time, drag and ripple in time. In addition, a painting and a stutter both force us to encounter the stuff language is made of, allowing us to question how we think and, in turn, how we see.

The visual imagery used in Tom’s paintings is primarily derived from photographs of empty homes and domestic interiors belonging to the recently deceased. Classical works of (Western) art are also vital sources of imagery, allowing him to contextualise his paintings within an art-historical framework from which he can excavate, adapt, and develop. Both strands of source material have within them a multiplicity of counterintuitive connections which, he proposes, opens a way to find something different or, even, new.

Tom is always willing to work with, and open to learn from, other researchers and creatives working in pursuit of recognising, championing and investigating alternative, or dysfluent, forms of dialogue as creatively valuable methodological strategies.

Email: tom.mence@hotmail.com