Lake Forest College Alumni Spotlight Art Exhibition features Colin Thomson ’71 and Edward West ’71

Lake Forest College invites the public to attend the Sonnenschein Gallery’s opening reception on Thursday, September 5 at 7:30 p.m. to kick off the 2013-2014 season with the Alumni Spotlight Exhibition featuring painter Colin Thomson ’71 and photographer Edward West ’71.

Thomson was born in London, England and moved to New York in 1955. He graduated from Lake Forest College in 1971and earned his MFA from Yale University in 1977. His paintings and works of art on paper have been exhibited internationally and are included in museum, corporate, and private collections around the world. 

He describes his work in the following way, "My painting ideas develop through drawings and watercolors. Sources include Islamic textiles, graphic design, architectural plans, maps. cartoons, and the landscape. An overall sense of playfulness belies a more serious investigation of light and space, color and drawing. The paintings create their own location, a meditative and natural parallel to the world I am experiencing. each one looks for a voice, a context for the individual parts, joining thought and action, material and idea." 

West has been a practicing artist for over 30 years. He is a 1971 graduate of Lake Forest College and received his MFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1973. His creative work includes photography, collage, and installation. West's work has been exhibited and collected by museums and galleries, corporations and private individuals all over the world. While his work is concerned with the formal arrangement of visual elements, its ultimate source is always a relationship with another person. He notes, "As a photographer, my desire is always to enter the mental space of the person being imaged-to photograph the gravity of how thoughts can inform gestures.”

The Sonnenschein Gallery is located on the third floor of the Durand Art Institute on the North Campus of Lake Forest College. Gallery hours are Mon/Wed/Fri 2:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. and Sat/Sun 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Admission is always free and open to the public. For more information visit www.lakeforest.edu/artgallery.