Denyse Thomasos

Denyse Thomasos studied at Yale School of Art, University of Toronto and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. The field of work recorded is painting. Employment is recorded with Rutgers University. Work by Denyse Thomasos is recorded in the collections of Whitney Museum of American Art. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship and Pew Fellowship in the Arts.

• Name — Denyse Thomasos • Born — 10 October 1964 • Birthplace — Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago • Died — 16 July 2012 • Place of death — New York City, New York, United States • Field — Painting • Education — * University of Toronto (BA) • Yale School of Art (MFA) • Style — Abstract

Denyse Thomasos was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, to Jennie Ann (née Leiba) and Raymond Garth Thomasos, who attained his BS in University College of the West Indies and was a high school teacher at a boys' school. Her father's family was politically involved in Trinidad and her great-uncle was the first Black Speaker of the House of Representatives. Thomasos and her family emigrated to Canada in 1970, settling in Toronto, Ontario, near Lawrence Avenue West and Keele Street. Her father obtained a master's degree in physics from the University of Waterloo and continued his career as a high school teacher. At the age of fifteen, Thomasos began taking drawing classes, where she especially enjoyed gesture drawing. Thomasos received her BA in painting and art history from the University of Toronto after studying at its Mississauga campus. She was politically active at this time, participating in divestment actions and protests against apartheid, which became a major theme represented in her paintings from this period. Thomasos' father died weeks before she entered graduate school. The grief from the loss influenced her early paintings. It was at this point that her work began to shift away from representational to more abstract works, as she searched for an "emotional connection with the paint and the canvas." Thomasos received her MFA in painting and sculpture from the Yale School of Art in 1989, after attending the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, in 1988.

Thomasos was known for architectionic structures and wall paintings. Due to the partially figurative nature of her work, Thomasos' art style has been described as "semi-abstractionist" by writer Esi Edugyan and as "representational abstraction" by curator Ben Portis. Thomasos often preferred site-specific installations over standard exhibitions. Her work was, in part, inspired by travel, slavery and its psychological impact on people of color, and the prison-industrial complex. Thomasos researched and photographed super-max jail sites during the Bush years. She was a professor at the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in Philadelphia, and Associate Professor of Art at Rutgers University's Arts, Culture and Media Department from 1995 to 2012. In 1994, Thomasos installed a mural entitled Recollect at contemporary artist-run centre Mercer Union in Toronto, Ontario. Her painting Babylon (2005) was acquired by Carr Hall at St. Michael's College in Toronto, Ontario.

Thomasos' first solo exhibition was in 1995 at Alpha Gallery in Boston. Her other exhibitions included "Inside" (2015) at the Blackwood Gallery at the University of Toronto Mississauga; "60 Painters" (2011) at Humber Arts & Media Studios in Etobicoke, Ontario; "Formerly Exit Five: Portable Monuments to Recent History" (2010) at the University of Saskatchewan College Art Galleries in Saskatoon; "From Superjails to Super Paintings" (2010) at Olga Korper Gallery; "Swing Space: Wallworks" (2007) at the Art Gallery of Ontario; "Tracking: Bombings, Wars & Genocide: A Six Months Journey from New York to China, Vietnam, Cambodia & Indonesia" (2004) at MSVU Art Gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia; and "Rewind" (2004) at the Art Gallery of Bishop's University in Lennoxville, Sherbrooke, Quebec.

In 2009, Thomasos married filmmaker Samein Priester at City Hall, New York City. The couple adopted their child, Syann, in June 2010. They were remarried at St. Basil's Church in Toronto, Ontario in July 2010 and the reception was held underneath Thomasos' monumental painting Babylon (2005) which is permanently installed in the University of Toronto's Carr Hall.

Thomasos died suddenly in July 2012 at age forty-seven, due to an allergic reaction to dye injected during a diagnostic medical procedure. A memorial service in her honour was held at the Basilica of St. Patrick's Old Cathedral in New York City.

Thomasos' work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario among other institutions.