About K. Wayne Thornley, Maker of Objects and Images

Artist Bio

Thornley is a mixed media artist whose work spans several media categories, but he spends most of his creative time as a painter, an assemblage artist, and a wire wrangler. His work has been juried into local, state, and national exhibitions across the U.S.

When not at his real job, Thornley works from his home studio in Columbia, SC. Recently, He has been teaching a series of project-based creativity classes, the ARTMAKERS BOOTCAMP series, with art partner Lucy Bailey.

Artist Statement

My work deals largely with the life-shaping power of memory, memory loss, and memory-imbued objects that ultimately become someone else’s detritus.

This is my second time to be invited to show work in the Jasper Project Tiny Gallery. For me, it is an opportunity to do work slightly outside my normal themes. I’ve been wanting to do a series of chair paintings, so, using my usual materials and techniques, I’ve created these small works, a limited series I am calling “A Gathering of Chairs.” In the same way found or collected objects carry their history with them, chairs, whether heirlooms or institutional furnishings, reflect their own history through style, usage, ownership, and service. My hope is that one of these chairs sparks the viewer’s memory of a time, a relative, a place, or a feeling from their own collection of life experiences.