Canvas Six (left) and Canvas Four (right)
Detail of Construct 2021 80 x 170cm oil on canvas
MK Thomson (b. 2001) is a figurative oil painter from Ullapool, in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland. Her practice is an ongoing study into the contrast between the non-permanence of existence, the finite nature of physical being, and the timeless accessibility of the body as a visual language. Thomson is concurrently engaged with the enduring significance of oil painting as a tradition that, in contemporary contexts, is characterised by a persistent negotiation of continuity and rupture, such as in paintings by Justin Mortimer and Gerhard Richter.
Thomson’s practice is driven by process, with the tangibility and materiality of oil paint acting as a catalyst for how she responds to, and rearticulates, the human body. This practically driven approach provides a structure of actuality that is saturated by her philosophical studies, primary amongst her influences is Giorgio Agamben’s notion that to be contemporary is to be disconnected from the conditions of one’s time. Subsequently, the non-narrative bodies pictured reflect the atemporal and the untimely.
Thomson’s current practice is an open-ended enquiry into the parallel conditions of contemporary being and contemporary painting; she believes that to engage in either is to walk a shifting landscape of the grounded and the ambiguous. The monumental figures she paints reflect a version of the body that oscillates between solidity, eternity, and the unknowable precarity of now. Ultimately, beyond the fact that they reflect the human, these paintings exist in realms of uncertainty, suggesting that perhaps, beyond the physical truth of existence, life is uncertain.
In 2023, Thomson achieved a BA (Hons) First Class degree in Fine Art from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design. She has received multiple awards, including: The Graham Lang Prize for Excellence in Drawing and Painting (2023), The William S. Phillips Scholarship Award (2024), and the Visual Artist and Craft Makers Award (2024). Thomson is a finalist in the Signature Art Prize (2025) and has been nominated for the New Blood Art Emerging Artist Art Prize (2025). Her paintings are held in collections across the UK, Europe, and Australia, and have been exhibited widely across the UK.