Thomas Kirby - Biography 

     Thomas Kirby, born in San Francisco in 1962, has lived and worked in New Mexico since 1983.  His artwork is exhibited in galleries and private collections nationwide and is included in major corporate collections in the United States and Europe.  He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from The College of Santa Fe, where he currently teaches Art.  

     Kirby has traveled extensively in Asia and Europe and often draws inspiration from his travels for his work.  Influences from Ireland, India and the far islands of Indonesia are reflected in the symbols, patterns of light and play of color in his paintings.  His fascination with Renaissance images is the product of his personal studies in Art History, as well as time spent in Rome and Florence. 

     The Mysteries of nature, time and perception pre-occupy this artist.  His first teacher was his father; Abstract Expressionist artist, Tom Kirby Sr., student of Mark Rothko and Clifford Still.   The desire to transcend the visible by capturing its flight or motion is the technique of the father while the son works by entering into the quiet, permeable, unseen heart of the visible world. 

     In his paintings, Kirby draws us backward in time into a kind of unity with all of the artists who have gone before him, in the moment that is uniquely, this moment in time.  Mysteriously poised, his world both opens to us, and opens us, to ourselves.  

     For Thomas Kirby, the great poet and mystic Rumi describes best, the nature of Art, of Nature and of Life:

This place is a dream 
Only a sleeper considers it real. 

Patience with small details 
makes perfect a large work, 
like the universe.  

There's nothing left of me. 
I'm like a ruby held to the sunrise.

Fire is my child
but I must be consumed 
and become fire.

An invisible bird flies over, 
but casts a quick shadow. 

Where a wind lifts, that helps with winnowing, 
and at the same moment, sends a ship on its way.