Pictures of Home
Images from several of Thompson's calendars are paired here with brief quotations from children about the meaning of home. The result is an often visually interesting but uncohesive work. The paintings combine sharp-edged realism with surreal details: houses grow from trees or out of chairs or bathtubs; interiors flow seamlessly into exteriors; cats are larger than cars. They are provocative but not strongly narrative images, and the quotations that accompany them, which express genuine but generally unremarkable, even trite, sentiments ("Home means where you grow up"), do not extend them in any meaningful way. In fact, text and art often seem only very generally related; and the disjunction between the ordinary emotions and the sometimes quite bizarre images proves jarring. Although Thompson's pictures can be intriguing to contemplate singly, the attempt to weave them together into a larger whole--with the thinnest of texts as connnecting thread--seems misguided and ultimately fails. Ages 4-7.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.