Why I Long to be a Sex Symbol – Thom Kofoed
CAF FEAN
This week is the chance to see local painter Thom Kofoed’s portraits of celebrities, with more than a little bit of himself thrown into the mix. CAF FEAN catches up with Thom to understand more about what inspired the artworks.
The Walkway Gallery at Hastings Museum and Art Gallery is populated with oil paintings of glossy paparazzi shots depicting famous faces from Hollywood of a bygone era. Take a trip down memory lane to the early ‘80s to late 1990s with a jaunty Grace Jones, timeless shots of Cilla Black, Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson, Kate Moss and Linda Evangelista offer us a window on the celebrity world, snapped by paparazzi and reinterpreted in Thom’s angular, painterly style.
“Building this body of work took about seven months. I had challenged myself to paint ten paintings in five months and had a show ready to launch at a London gallery. At the last minute, the venue had to cancel: Hastings Museum and Art Gallery reached out and saved the day, offering me a spot from March until June this year. I ended up producing twelve paintings in total, and I am pleased with the result.”
Thom has always been interested in subcultures, celebrating popular culture and nostalgia. His illustrative work features portraits of 90s television cult classics such as Saved by the Bell, Angela Lansbury of Murder She Wrote and Columbo, amongst others.
This exhibition sees Kofoed stepping away from the depiction of soap characters and focuses on the framing of the people behind the screen, the choices the photographers made in framing them, and capturing them off guard.
“It’s that liminal space between private and public personas,” he explains, “the Judy Garland picture is a really sad photo – I wanted everything else to be dark, she is older here… the picture was taken a couple of years before she died.”
Over the past two years, Thom has seen a shift in his work. He began painting in oils in 2020 and experimented with figures in an environment, rather than the stark blank backgrounds his illustration work portrays.
“Although I didn’t paint during my degree (which I somehow graduated from 14 years ago, gulp) I have been painting my whole life. And I think during my degree my work was considered to be more graphic and my tutors suggested graphic design to me, which always frustrated me.
It’s fair to say that my painting isn’t founded in ‘proper techniques’– I’ve developed my style.”
Another significant shift is working at a larger scale: “I work quite fast and am used to making smaller pieces. Keeping it small means I can start and finish a painting in a day. Working on these larger pieces at 50cm squared or A2, I’ve forced myself to spend a couple of weeks sitting with the work. I’m extremely impatient but I also love doing something arduous and boring for hours on end, like painting a pattern or working out a tricky composition.”
I ask Thom what’s next for him and his art. The majority of his paintings have been treating subjects of popular culture, celebrity and the tension between the two. His next paintings are set to uncover nightlife, working from photos from parties from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s.
“I’m interested in celebrity and that innate fear of being forgotten, as well as the notion of popular culture and consumerism. At the centre of everything that I paint is intense nostalgia stemming from my childhood – I was obsessed with everything cool about our culture. It’s the idea of something we’ve lost, being recaptured and placed in a new context.”
Why I Long to be a Sex Symbol
Hastings Museum and Art Gallery
The exhibition runs Until 11 June
hmag.org.uk
thomkofoed.com
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