About

Having graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BFA in Fine Art in 1977, Thomas Cox moved to New York and found employment as an archivist and printer at Tatyana Grosman’s legendary atelier, Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE).  Here, he printed original lithographs, collaborating with Jasper Johns, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Rauschenberg, Lee Bontecou, James Rosenquist, and other prominent artists, for seven years. The general milieu, and working with such notable artists, gave him a heightened perception of his surroundings, seemingly putting art at the center of the his world.

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Seven years later, he left to devote himself to his own work. His exploration of abstract art at first seemed to promise a language of gesture that offered infinite possibilities, but that soon turned out to be untrue.  Gradually, looking for some further connection that he wasn’t finding in the art hewas familiar with, he became involved in human rights issues centering on the Muslim world, initially kindled by spending several months in East Africa, and later from visits to Tunisia, Palestine, Morocco, Turkey and Iran.

Eventually he found that combining his art with these concerns became the key. His recent work, using as source material images of the aftermath of bombings, tunnels used to smuggle into Gaza, and other scenes outside of American visual experiences, has been immensely satisfying to create.

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Artwork by Thomas Cox has been acquired by public collections including The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Fidelity Investments, Ayla Oasis Development Company, and Cairo-Amman Bank, Jordan. Galleries that have shown his work, publicly or privately, include Bjorn Wetterling, Stockholm; Wolfgang Wittrock, Düsseldorf; Thomas Barry, Minneapolis; and Lorence Monk, New York. He has participated in artists’ symposia, in Amman and in Aqaba, Jordan. Van Der Plas Gallery NYC has represented him since 2016.