Thomas Cornell

 Current Exhibits

Elan Fine Arts
Rockport, Maine

 

(click the images for larger versions of the artwork)
summer-fall
 coastal studies
clamdiggersharpswell
  little snake   clamdigger
manhatten   dionysos
 bathers    bathers

Aesthetic Stance

In addition to using art to perceive the good and the beauty in nature, one of my goals as an artist is to depict the beauty of human conduct.  I want to signify that the naturalness within us can be positively transfigured with the inspiration of art.

This aesthetic stance celebrates empiricism, due to my belief that seeing and acknowledging the priority of nature is imperative - a precondition to the achievement of justice and well being.  Nature is truth. In order for reason to intervene justly on behalf of the good and beauty, it must first see the truth immanent in nature.

My teaching reflects this ethical stance.  I encourage objective observation to achieve empirical adequacy.  I also want students to learn the virtue of unselfing that occurs through attention to otherness - seeing beyond prejudice. This teaching project requires a concept of the self and agency that accepts and encourages attunement to contingency on nature.  This moral capability is signified by Iris Murdoch's virtue of  " ...just and loving attention to the other."

We need a renaissance - a new, earth-wide civic religion that constructs and enhances well being. In light of shared civic obligation, art has the unique imagination and the synthetic genius to responsibly envision and seductively depict the highest good.