Roadside Art: Paintings by Terry Thompson

Thompson’s paintings remind the viewer of an era whose exuberant style reflected confidence in the future and excitement about the present.  The hallmark space-age motifs and colors, resurrected under the artist’s precise brush, transport us to a time, real or imagined, when we bought our milk from a dairy and went bowling after work.

Yet his depiction of broken neon and peeling paint jolts us out of the past, a reminder that these signs are relics, hanging on against a modern tide of uniformity.  Across America today, blandly familiar signs greet us – more tasteful perhaps, and certainly based on more market research – but lacking the personality and originality of the old signs that Thompson portrays.