Influenced by the natural world, myth, science fiction, and pop culture, Thomas McCue employs traditional media and a gestural, abstract expressist and graphic approach to making images. The result is suggestive of narratives and entities suggestive of biological forms and processes at the micro and macro level. Cellular metabolism and reproduction are of particular interest along with the forms of plants, animals, and the seeming randomness of nature. Woven throughout are ideas, settings, and creatures from mythology, comics, and science fiction, part of Thomas’ life-long mental landscape.
As a vision-impaired artist, Thomas is often caught. Between the urge to express abstraction delivered to his mind’s eye in an ongoing basis by his perceptual disability and the desire to visualize ideas that have always interested him both visceral and intellectually. This manifests in the artistic process as a struggle between expressive gesture, desire for precision, and memory along with a lot of very close viewing Thomas does not seek to explicitly inform the viewer of his vision, nor are the works about a particular sight modality, but the very specific impairment exerted by LHON does inform how Thomas sees the world and the work demonstrates this fact.
Thomas has been making art his entire life, and attended university to study both art and science. Completing a BFA in painting in 1994 he worked and exhibited briefly until transitioning to a career in graphic design and art direction. His eyesight diminished significantly to the point of low vision or legal blindness in 2001 due to Leber’s Hereditary Optic Neuropathy. Forced to relearn daily life, not to mention art-making, Thomas went on a journey of adaptation and discovery. He eventually completed a Master’s of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design practiced User Experience Design and Research for over ten years. Having continued to make art over all this time, he returned to painting in earnest in 2022 and now spends the majority of his time in the studio.
