• This is the portfolio site of Daniel Thibodeau
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• Artist's Statement
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• Brief Biography & Political Statement
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Especially because I am self-taught, art for me has always been about discovery – about discovering significant images that do not yet fully exist and participating in the image’s emergence into material form - and about discovering my own capacity to do this.

The end result of the creative process is not the end – once the work of art exists objectively it becomes the basis for other people to see. Though the original notion I have of an image necessarily has enough meaning for me to undertake the project, the image itself evolves as it is being realized and takes on new and deeper meaning, at least for me. Whether what emerges through the creative process is a fuller articulation of the original notion or just an agglomeration of ideas, or something in between, I don’t know – nor do I want to. Ultimately the work’s meaning is determined by the viewer, and so it is in part recreated with each viewer.

Though I don’t try to fully understand the process, it is clearly dialectical – the interaction between myself and the image (and occasionally other people’s reaction to it) as it achieves each interim state, presents a series of problems and resolutions, contradictions and syntheses, until it reaches some point where I don’t care to take it any further. The result is never inevitable – it is the result of a series of choices made, each provoking new questions and answers – like life in general.

And so in some sense my art is about life, about being in the world. As someone reading this may have already guessed, as a young philosophy student I spent time studying Sartre and existential phenomenology – cause or effect? – or perhaps the Buddhists are correct that such a question is based on an illusion. Philosophical thought is irrelevant to what I do as an artist, yet I discover echoes of my thinking in my work, and vice versa. Again, like life in general.

The starting point for a work may be an idea, an imaginary shape, or something in the objective world that strikes me – a root crawling across a stone, the wind running its fingers through the leaves, corn seeking the sun. Perception is never passive. Rudolf Arnheim said somewhere (Visual Thinking, I believe) that visual perception involves something like an imaginary finger reaching out and tracing the edges and texture of things we perceive. Imagination is always at work – no such thing exists as a tabula rosa or a passive reception of sense data – and so abstraction is always a part of visual perception and all art is both abstract and figurative, to varying degrees. I enjoy the interplay between the two and feel that the expression of both objective and abstract imagery simultaneously comes closer to evoking the feeling of life as lived than any other I am aware of. This may be the constant across my different artistic approaches.

All images on this site are copyrighted, but in keeping with the spirit of the internet, you are welcome to reprint illustrations from this site provided that:

1) you are a non-profit organization or are otherwise using the material for non-profit purposes AND

2) images are attributed to Dan Thibodeau

Other re-use requires prior explicit agreement.

Needless to say, most of the images are too small for most print purposes. Email me if you'd like to reproduce in print at a larger size: contact@danthibodeau.com

Markettheism is available as a high quality 24x36 inch color poster. Click on the button below. If you want more than one, be sure to hit "enter" after changing the quantity.

If you're interested in larger quantities at lower prices for resale: contact@danthibodeau.com.

Likewise, if you’re interested in any other work: contact@danthibodeau.com.

Friends tell me I should include some background notes, so here goes.

I was born in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950s and remember Jim Crow from a white child’s perspective – confused acceptance accompanied by a gut feeling that there was something very wrong. I began drawing as a young child and spent much of my time, in and out of school, sketching and drawing - often grisly battlefield scenes of rebel soldiers vanquishing evil Yankees. My family moved north to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when I was 10, just before the civil rights struggles reached a boiling point. There I was introduced to a different world view. Art continued to be central for me into my early teens, but in the absence of parental encouragement and with the Viet Nam war rumbling in the background, my focus shifted more to social and political issues. I made a slow intellectual transition from Republican conservative to the anti-authoritarian left and began doing political cartoons for the high school newspaper.

With the draft looming and tasked with working my way through college, art receded into the background, in part because of the anti-figurative ideology that dominated the art schools in the early 1970s. I studied history and philosophy in an attempt to make sense of the world.

As the political struggles of the early seventies decreased in intensity I noticed I was getting older. I started to realize also that I was ill-suited to academia and realized that art still had a fundamental hold on me. Part of my attention turned to art, another to survival: I returned to the university in computer science. In parallel, I began to teach myself to draw.

On Ideology and Philosophy:

Though I’ve considered many points of view, I’ve never been comfortable identifying myself with a political label. It seems to me that “isms” tend to make a fetish out of methods, causing one to lose site of the deeper values and goals that they supposedly serve. While a very anti-religious college student I developed a tremendous respect for the work being done by religiously inspired opponents of the war in Southeast Asia. I also began to realize that I was not altogether comfortable with some people espousing similar philosophies to my own. I came to realize that while ideas are important, there are deeper issues revolving around value, meaning and perception. This realization remains fundamental to my art and politics.

From dockworker to philosophy student, student activist to software engineer, union activist to corporate executive, mailroom clerk to artist, entrepreneur to parent of a child with disabilities, I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but I’ve always tried to find ways to advance the values that motivate me: politics (and life) is the art of the possible. Art is the life of possibility.

On the Markettheism poster:

After browsing this poster, some may find it surprising to discover I am not anti-capitalist. The key is a distinction between values from methods. Capitalism can be a useful tool. But it is not a panacea, it is not a god. Like every human creation, this system of production and distribution has utility toward certain ends, but is dysfunctional toward others. Today those other ends, like social justice, responsibility, security, environmental stewardship, democracy, and peace, are under siege precisely because they challenge the market’s claim to be absolute. Today’s ideologues seek to extend the domination of market values over all other values in every sphere of life. It makes no difference what the question is, the answer is corporate control; if it cannot be done by the market, it should not be done. Indeed, market theory is taking on the role that communism once played – a secular religion that claims utopia as its justification. For its acolytes it has become an all-embracing belief system – it is a new totalitarianism in the making.

I guess that makes me a heretic.

I'd love to hear your comments, reactions, suggestions, criticisms, whatever: contact@danthibodeau.com.