Zachary Thornton is a narrative painter, who eschews overt storytelling in favor of ambiguity and subtle suggestion. The artist explains, “the paintings of my night series are exterior scenes set in the midst of anonymous, silent streets, and illuminated by the isolated lights of the nocturnal world that turn otherwise ordinary moments into mysterious and provocative tableaux.”

The charged atmosphere created in his work, evokes complex emotional responses playing on private and personal experiences. Surrounded by sheltering trees and glowing houses, against the looming darkness and a silence at once ominous and reassuring, the solitary figures of young women encounter the promises and hazards of the night. The viewer catches these figures confronted by their solitude and occupied by the palpable absence of other events.

Zachary Thornton is the recipient of the Baltimore City Individual Artist Grant (2006) and a Maryland State Art Council Grant (2005) and his work has appeared twice in the Mid-Atlantic edition of New American Paintings as well as reviewed extensively by Glen McNatt of the Baltimore Sun. He has exhibited internationally at Janine Bean Gallery (Berlin), Thomas Punzman Gallery (Spain), First Gallery (Rome, Italy) and throughout the United States in galleries such as Stricoff Fine Art (Chelsea, New Yor), Robert Lange Gallery (Charleston, South Carolina), The Creative Alliance (Baltimore, Maryland), Maryland Art Place (Baltimore) and MFA Circle Gallery (Annapolis, Maryland) among many others. The artist earned his BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2001 and “Night Visions” marks the first solo exhibition with C. Grimaldis Gallery and his first show in Baltimore since exhibiting at the Creative Alliance in 2007.