27-year-old Iranian-American artist Mahin Thorp lives and teaches in New York City and arrived in Billings in mid-July for a one month residency with the Yellowstone Art Museum.
Thorp creates abstract paintings exploring humans’ relationships with stone. She says she draws inspiration from her childhood in rural Utah, where there was a lot of mining.
“I’m taking close up images to see what emerges from the stone,” said Thorp. “This comes out of some Persian animistic traditions that believe that the landscape is a living entity. This work also originated from looking at a lot of Persian miniature images.”
Included in her painting process are chunky art mediums she uses to create details that pop out from the surface. Some contain plastic, others metal, like a thick pumice of reprocessed copper she’s been dipping into a lot during her residency.
“It has a beautiful blue color in the jar, but when it dries, it actually has a black color,” said Thorp.
Thorp's residency at the Yellowstone Art Museum continues from July 17 to August 22. The paintings pictured here are works in progress.
A previous version of this story included incorrect exhibition details. The Yellowstone Art Museum says Thorp’s work will be unveiled at an artist talk scheduled for August 14 in Billings.
