Creativity and humor have always been part of Patti Thomas’ character. But the stasis of the pandemic coupled with encouragement from a friend pushed the artist to try her hand at painting, opening the floodgates to a new mode of creative output. The Ghost: Paintings by Patti Thomas, features artworks created over the past year of this expression.

Utilizing language, irony, and absurdist, surreal figurations, the featured paintings offer fantastical commentaries rooted in random, whimsical, social events, thoughts, and situations. The works humorously deconstruct identities and the layers that exist within them as Thomas utilizes an intuitive, stream of consciousness approach to her process.

The embrace of the various parts of ourselves is reflected conceptually, as well as through the artist’s own artistic journey. Her introduction to the art scene under the pseudonym The Ghost represents a journey of self-discovery separate from another part of her identity as the proud wife of Buffalo Bills Hall of Famer Thurman Thomas. As these two worlds for Thomas continue to grow and blend, it reminds us that the disparate parts that make us who we are do not exist in a vacuum. In embracing this truth while breaking down the assumptions we are all guilty of making off first appearances, we create room for understanding and empathy around more than what meets the eye.