S|O Gallery is pleased to present the work of Brenda Thomas. Thomas makes art drawn from the subjects she knows most intimately: home, family, friendship, and motherhood.

Thomas often works with everyday subject matter, using images as personal symbols that call up her memory of a relationship, a period of time, or a specific event. She describes her memory as working in "snapshots," and her pieces aim to tell each story as she has come to understand it. For Thomas, a work succeeds when viewers recognize an experience of their own within it.

Her range reflects more than 35 years as a visual arts educator, a role that required her to teach and master nearly every medium. Although she typically describes herself as a painter, Thomas works regularly in graphite, colored pencil, charcoal, and a variety of experimental printmaking processes. Mixed media is the most significant outcome of that breadth: she selects whatever materials best serve the narrative, and considers her mixed-media pieces the truest reflection of how she thinks. Most recently, she has been exploring encaustic as a new means of expression.

Her portfolio spans quilts, landscapes and still-life scenes, figurative work, and small-scale treasure boxes.