EventsThe New Social Environment#550

A Painting Survey, Six Decades: Thornton Willis

Featuring Willis and Tom McGlynn

Monday, May 2, 2022 1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

These free events are produced by The Brooklyn Rail.

Painter Thornton Willis joins Rail Editor-at-Large Tom McGlynn for a conversation. We conclude with a poetry reading by Erin Pérez.

In this Talk

Visit A Painting Survey, Six Decades: Thornton Willis on view at David Richard Gallery through May 13, 2022 →

Thornton Willis

Abstract painter Thornton Willis moved to New York City in 1967 and taught at Wagner College in Staten Island. He primarily studied with Mel Price, and was heavily influenced by American Expressionism. Willis’ work has been widely exhibited, and he is the recipient of many awards and recognitions, including a Painting Fellowship from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2001), a Printmaking Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1984), and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting (1978). He has been represented by the Elizabeth Harris Gallery (New York) since 2001.

Tom McGlynn

Tom McGlynn is an artist and writer based in the NYC area. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, and The Cooper- Hewitt National Design Museum of the Smithsonian among other national and international collections. He is currently an Editor at Large at The Brooklyn Rail, contributing articles and criticism since 2012. He also currently teaches at Parsons/The New School, NYC. In June 2024, he had his first one-person exhibition in Europe, at Settantotto Gallery in Gent, Belgium. He opened his fourth solo exhibition at Rick Wester Fine Art, NYC, in October 2025.

The Rail has a tradition of ending our conversations with a poetry reading, and we're fortunate to have Dao Strom reading.

Dao Strom

Artist Dao Strom works with three “voices”—written, sung, visual—to explore hybridity and the intersection of personal and collective histories. She is the author of Instrument (Fonograf Editions, 2020) and its musical companion Traveler’s Ode (Antiquated Future Records, 2020); a bilingual poetry-art book, You Will Always Be Someone From Somewhere Else (AJAR Press); a memoir, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People, and song cycle, East/West; and two books of fiction, The Gentle Order of Girls and Boys and Grass Roof, Tin Roof. Born in Vietnam, Strom grew up in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California and lives in Portland, Oregon. She is co-founder of two collective art projects, She Who Has No Master(s), and De-Canon.

https://www.daostrom.com/

We’d like to thank The Marion Boulton Kippy Stroud Foundation and Teiger Foundation for making these conversations possible, and for their support of our growing archive 🌈✨