July 2025 Color Stories: Abstract Paintings and Pottery

Color Stories

Abstract Paintings and Pottery

Solo Show by Jamie Thomson

In Color Stories, Jamie Thomson invites viewers into a vivid, introspective world where emotion is translated through color and texture, and the complexity of human experience is reflected in both paint and clay. A Royal Oak abstract painter and potter, Thomson uses her dual mediums to explore and express the inexpressible: joy and grief, clarity and chaos, control and surrender.

The exhibition marks a significant evolution in Thomson’s artistic journey, shaped by a rich, unconventional path through psychology, design, and fine art. She studied both psychology and art as an undergraduate at Ohio Northern University before earning her doctorate in psychology at Wright State and working in the field for nearly a decade. In 2011, she moved into web and graphic design, where she has worked for the past 14 years. Painting became a serious part of her practice about five years ago, offering a return to visual storytelling and emotional expression. Ceramics, which first captured her interest during her undergraduate studies, re-entered her life more recently, bringing tactile depth and a meditative process to her work. These two practices—painting and pottery—now anchor her creative life, offering complementary ways to explore structure, spontaneity, and our emotional lives.

Acrylic paint, with its immediacy and vibrance, allows Thomson to work to accommodate her ADHD and her appetite for visual experimentation. Her paintings often reveal bold geometric forms alongside sweeping, organic strokes—each piece represents her attempt to reconcile the contradictions of order and freedom, containment and flow. She is a Detroit Society of Women Painters and Sculptors member and has participated in many Detroit metro group shows.  

With ceramics, Thomson embraces process. From the rhythmic centering of clay to the alchemical surprise of the kiln, her pottery becomes a tactile journal of her thoughts. Each form holds a narrative: stories embedded not only in shape and glaze but also in the artist’s physical gestures and moments of decision or letting go. Working with clay also offers unexpected physical therapy for increasing osteoarthritis in her hands, allowing her to maintain flexibility and manage pain.  

Thomson has been a member of Lawrence Street Gallery for over two years and an artist for many years, but this is her first solo show.