In Storm Tharp’s work, characters and expressive moments emerge through washes of color and intricate linework. Each of his paintings works as an apparatus by which a character gets read as a performance, fantasy, or manifestation of what we want to become. Emphasizing the subtle space between shape and abstraction, Tharp questions the nature of selfhood: What is our inner identity versus what gets projected to the outer world? And how do the two combine or coalesce?

Storm Tharp was born in 1970 in Salem, OR. He earned his BFA from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY (1992).

Tharp has mounted solo exhibitions at PDX CONTEMPORARY ART in Portland, OR; Galerie Bertrand in Geneva, Switzerland; Feldbuschweisner in Berlin, Germany; Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York, NY; and the Herbert F. Johnson Museum at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.

His work has been included in group exhibitions such as American Genre: Contemporary Painting, curated by Michelle Grabner, at the ICA at MECA in Portland, ME; PAPER at The Saatchi Gallery in London, England; Whitney Biennial 2010, curated by Francesco Bonami and Gary Carrion-Murayari at Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY; Human Being, curated by Kristan Kennedy, at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, OR; and others.

Tharp’s art resides in numerous public collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY; Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY; Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, OH; Portland Art Museum in Portland, OR; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY; and Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego in San Diego, CA.

Tharp’s work has been featured in publications such as Art in America, Artforum, ART PAPERS, New American Paintings, Interview Magazine, Modern Painters, The Daily Beast, BOMB Magazine, Daily Kos,, and elsewhere.