PINE BLUFF -- Justin Thomasson has always loved art.
"I've loved art ever since the age of 3. It started off as, like, just a fascination with the world around me, and I wanted to impose that on paper, to create what I saw," Thomasson said. "I noticed people were complimenting me, saying stuff like 'Justin, this is nice, keep on doing what you do.' It made me feel more confident and better about my work and also made me want to improve as well, so from that point on, I knew that art was my passion, and I loved it."
He progressed over the years from sketching cartoons with crayons to drawing realistic images with pens and paint. Now he uses colored pencils to create pieces so detailed they look like photographs.
At 18, Thomasson is an art major at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, and he intends to make a career out of creating. He knows it won't be easy, but he's seeing some success.
Thomasson has artwork hanging in several homes and offices in Pine Bluff and at least one in the Simmons Building in downtown Little Rock. Last fall, he did a portrait of author Terry McMillan.
"The University of Pine Bluff paid me to do that, and I got to present it to her," he said. "She cried on stage when I gave it to her. And afterwards, I got to speak with her, and she told me a few things about rising up on a skill set and how you have to put yourself out there for something like art or writing."
He has a strategy in mind.
'YOUR NAME WILL GROW'
"To get your artwork out there is really a very competitive game, so you have to really do your work, focus on your work, concentrate to develop your skill," he said. "And people will network you, you know? They'll see your work and show another person, they'll say, 'I know this artist that can do this and that,' and eventually your name will grow and grow until eventually, a lot of people will know you, and you can sell work consistently. I've had luck with that as well. I'm getting commissions every week or so."
Thomasson has had ample help along the way. His mother, Felicia Rhodes, has always been his biggest supporter, he said.
"My mom, she's amazing. She's always supported me through my art career. She's currently a social worker, and she is one of my biggest motivations in life because I would hate to see her disappointed in me. I would hate to fail, considering all that she's done in supporting me," Thomasson said. "She's a smart woman. She has like three master's [degrees], and she raised me all on her own. She made sure me and my four brothers were always good, and I think she did a great job. She's the best mom I could have asked for."
James Horton, former guidance counselor at Pine Bluff High School, where Thomasson graduated last year, has been an invaluable mentor as well.
Horton, also a former band director, served as the talent chairman for Omega Psi Phi fraternity at UAPB, and he identified Thomasson early on as someone the fraternity needed to see, even though its focus had been on performing arts.
"We would get students from all around the area to compete for our talent hunt -- one for the local, one for the state, one for our district and then for our international thing," he said. "I saw this unique talent in Justin, so I started working with him and kind of started mentoring him a little bit about presentation and different things. The talent was already there -- it was going to be noticed anyway -- we just handled the presentation."
'ROUGH DRAFT'
The fraternity financed the matting and framing of Thomasson's art, said Horton, which took his work from "rough draft" to a more polished form. Horton coached Thomasson on narrative, telling the stories behind his pieces to evoke the emotion or explain fictional pretense or whimsy.
"To my amazement, he excelled right on to the next level really quickly," Horton said. "A couple of years there, he won our state competition, a couple of times he went to district. And he placed first runner-up, I think, with kids from around the four-state area of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma."
Thomasson's self-portrait, an image of him playing a guitar on a red couch in the den at his family's home, has sparked a lot of interest, Horton said, and there have been numerous requests for a piece Thomasson created of a skull in a military uniform, seated on a throne with golden lions on the armrests. It has border embellishments, painted with acrylics apart from the rest of the work and attached to the canvas, and the piece was varnished with alcohol to smooth out its edges.
"He wasn't ready to part with that one," Horton said.
Horton said Thomasson's mother called him, initially alarmed by the skull art that she feared might indicate her son had taken a dark turn.
Thomasson said he was in a darker place, driven there by the stresses of high school when he created that piece, but once he explained its meaning to his mother she seemed at peace.
"I wanted to go for controversy, and this piece is much different from any other piece I created," Thomasson said. "It symbolizes the death of a new world order and times are changing, things are coming along. At first, life was set in a moment of imperialism and monarchy, as you can see now things are changing. People are becoming more of individuals. And you see, we live in a society nowadays based on capitalism, so everyone has an equal opportunity. So this piece right here, just simply, is showing the dying of a greater power."
FOLK ART PIECES
Horton introduced Thomasson to Henri Linton, retired UAPB art professor and chairman who is set to receive the 2020 Governor's Arts Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Arkansas Arts Council during a luncheon at the Governor's Mansion this month.
Linton, Thomasson said, has taught him about the history of Pine Bluff, spurring him to create a series of folk art style pieces highlighting accomplished black Arkansans from the area, such as Leo Branton Jr., the attorney who defended Angela Davis, the University of California at Los Angeles professor who was charged with murdering a Marin County, Calif., judge in 1972; and George Washington Thomas, who was born in Plum Bayou Township and wrote boogie-woogie piano music. The series is on display at the Clinton Presidential Center.
Linton hired Thomasson as an intern to help him with a 10-by-50-foot painting he was commissioned to do for the Saracen Casino Resort under construction in Pine Bluff.
"I thought it would be good for him to have experience in working on a large project," Linton said. "He's a very talented young man, and he's very personable and very responsible and I think he will do very well. That's why I'm willing to invest in him."
Thomasson helps him with cleaning brushes, preparing canvases for painting, varnishing and other tasks. Linton teaches him about the business aspects of being a working artist. They discuss the importance of writing, research and studying history and of following through on projects.
"Ever since I started working with him, I have to say it changed me a lot as a person," Thomasson said. "It's generally made me more appreciative of life, and everything like that. He's an older person, so he talks to me about a lot of different things, and it made me see things in a different perspective."
MAPPING OUT HIS FUTURE
Thomasson is just a college freshman, but he is already mapping out his future.
"When I finish school, I plan to actually venture out in my art. I want to create pieces and I want to do murals all around, and I also plan to open up a studio," Thomasson said.
His business plan includes renting studio space to other artists and eventually expanding to open multiple studio locations around the state -- possibly around the country. He and a friend are looking into patenting plans for an "ecodesk" -- a smart desk, like a smartphone, that would have a screen on its surface. Their plans are on hiatus, but they have worked with the UAPB incubator and plan to continue their efforts in the future.
Thomasson wants to invest in real estate when he's older and is considering a foray into politics as well, which would give him a platform to spread "a more powerful message."
"I believe art education is essential for students," Thomasson said. "A lot of people see it as a recreational activity, but I believe this is a pillar in history that kind of helps with cultivating culture. There would be no culture without art. Music, clothing, food -- culinary arts -- it's all art."
Horton has no plans to stop mentoring Thomasson, making sure he knows his worth and avoids people who might want to take advantage of his talent and inexperience.
A few of Horton's fraternity brothers have approached Thomasson about portraits of their wives or families, and Horton wants to make sure Thomasson knows how to value his work.
"He's a remarkable young man with an amazing talent and his personality is really good, too. He's not one of those rambunctious-type young men. He has a vision for himself and he has a direction going in and he's trying to go forward with it," Horton said. "He has some good ambitions, he's unique and in my opinion, we have a Hall of Famer here."
Horton has also counseled Thomasson on the importance of being able to let go of his artwork, rather than holding onto it out of sentimentality, if his goal is to make it a business.
And he has his eye on Thomasson's self-portrait.
"If no one has purchased it by the time I've finished this year out, I'm going to see if I can talk him out of it," Horton said.
Thomasson has said it would be hard to let that one go.
"I don't know, actually, if I'd be able to let this one go," he said. "But from a business perspective, I would be willing to negotiate."
SundayMonday on 03/15/2020