"I paint what is hard to see or can't be seen. I don't paint the tissue, but that which connects the tissue. (What's in between) Thought forms that are autonomous, independent, not subject to control from outside. A trace, track or a print, or a visible sign left by something vanished or lost, "Techno Tribal”."

Thomas J. Bromley has his studio and residence in Chaves County, New Mexico, a few miles northwest of Roswell in an area known as Peaceful Valley. He has been painting with oils from the age of 12. Born in Detroit, Michigan, summer of 1951, raised in Las Vegas, Nevada and moved to New Mexico 40 years ago to set up a studio and paint pictures.​
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​THOMAS J. BROMLEY IN HIS OWN WORDS.
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I was born in Detroit, Michigan, 6 Mile and Woodard, near Palmer Park in the summer of '51. My father was Canadian born in London, Ontario in 1933. He worked construction and for the railroad. He did what he could to keep us at the high end of poverty. We lived in a basement the first couple of years of life, cold and damp in Downtown Detroit.​Father came from a family of preachers as did my mother of 16 years old; fundamental Christians in the extreme, world was coming to an end, constant bible study, meetings, and large revivals and conventions, thousands of people. However, these conventions and revivals would be held all over America. My mother and father didn't have much trouble traveling across country with very little money and an old Nash car.

They taught my brother and myself to camp along the road, to bathe and clean up in the lakes, rivers and ponds along the way, slept in the car, or under a tarp and eat at the camp fire. We never stayed in a motel or ate at a cafe, no money for that. I remember a couple of times we made trips from Detroit to Southern California, Arizona or Nevada to attend these large religious gatherings. (This was in the 1950's) The southwest had weather that was more agreeable for camping out under the stars.

​The folks also liked to hike and explore the southwest deserts and mountains and this is how I got to see my first petroglyphs. The First Nation people who lived in the desert country had learned how to make a life for themselves and family, build towns and cities, farms, flocks, and still had time to be creative in many ways. The one that knocked me out was the petroglyphs, in what seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. Where suitable rock surfaces were available, the artisans of these people would carve, hammer, peck out or scratch some incredible images. I was very young, but I remember looking at all those images with absolute wonder. I now know that you can find this primitive art form all over the planet. It has proved to be the most enduring material to store information or record an event on the planet.

The original meaning behind most of the petroglyphs are still tucked in behind many of the symbols after hundreds or thousands of years. Symbols are a language of the mine field, the image-nation. They are timeless _and don't always need words to satisfy them, Lingua lgnota, or unknown tongue; Maybe, you can't see a flower, but its fragrance is in the air so you know it is present. Symbols can mean many things to different folks.

Symbols can be very simple but very deep, like a key that unlocks a very old story of something familiar but not quite defined. Objects can retain information or memory, it's called psychometry. So, at a very early age I started to gain an understanding of the value of symbols and their ability to transcend time. A year or so later, I was eight years old and our family moved to southern Nevada, to Las Vegas. My father liked the warmer climate and better employment opportunities. There we were, fundamental Christians in Sin City 1959. Vegas was a small town back then, hot, full of opportunities and huge vast deserts. I don't really remember a time in my life when I did not draw pictures. My mother's younger sister was very talented at drawing and some painting, and I picked up a lot of tips and tricks watching her; as well as watching her with pencils, markers, crayons.

"Symbols are a language of the mine field, the image-nation. They are timeless _and don't always need words to satisfy them, Lingua lgnota, or unknown tongue; Maybe, you can't see a flower, but its fragrance is in the air so you know it is present."
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I learned quickly and enjoyed the process. Church, bible study, and religious conventions filled our lives. I remember at the end of the chapters or articles in religious magazines, books and even the Bible itself, there would be a blank space with no writing. I would draw pictures in these spaces thinking how good it was that I was afforded some relief from too much studying. In the 50's and 60's, Las Vegas was a solid adult town, not really a lot for a 12 year old child soaked in religion to do. So, like a lot of kids, I was going through other people's trash on trash day and came across some used oil paints, brushes, and canvas board in bad shape. I took them home and painted my first oil painting, of all things a sailboat - kind of, and was hooked for life. By this time in my life my father had steady employment with the phone company as a splicer, but there was no money for children. 

By the time I was 12 years old I was hiring out for the summers for construction, landscaping, house painting, whatever it took to make a buck so I could have my own money. Back then, a hard days work for a kid in the Nevada sun paid $5.00 for 8 hours or about 60 cents an hour. That was a lot of money for a kid; but then my mother taught me the way the world does math, she said, if I was going to work, then I was going to pay my way in the family by giving her half of my pay. Half of my pay in her world was $3.00 and I got $2.00 for myself. I still managed to buy my own oil paints, a brush or two, some canvas boards and I made my own easel out of some construction trash on one of the jobs. I was 13 years old, painting pictures and being a kid when a neighbor offered to give me $5.00 for one of these paintings. Ca-Ching! A day's wages for a painting? WOW! This was a good arrangement. ​I started painting pictures for money. At first 5 to 6 dollars through 10 dollars and 20. By the time I was 15 years old I was in the local newspapers listed as an artist selling' paintings for $100.00 sometimes more. Remember, this was 1966, $100.00 was the equivalent of a week's work for a grown man. What started out as a good thing for my parents, especially for my mother, started to go sideways with my father.

​He didn't understand why people were paying me so much for my paintings, sometimes more than he made at the phone company. In his way of thinking I believe he saw what I was doing, was vanity or something, not actual proper work. He was a preacher and he was pressing me hard to be the same. He believed the world would end soon and the work of the Lord is what I should be engaged in. By the late 60's my paintings hung in cafes downtown, doctor's offices, lawyers, in the school offices and local galleries in Vegas and Boulder City. I was also selling at local street shows and a fair or two. The paintings I did back then were varied. Most of the time I painted pictures that I was confident would sell, like landscapes, still- life, interiors, cute curious paintings. Folks would give me photographs to paint from as well. I never settled on a style really. I enjoyed the process of making pictures and watching people react to them. There was and still is so much to draw from, so many subjects to paint. Symbolism has always interested me. Artists that painted Surrealism, Cubist Painters, Impressionist, painters that took advantage of symbols in their work always interested me, but I really never developed a keen interest in anybody else's work. I don't have a favorite artist that I look to.

"By the late 60's my paintings hung in cafes downtown, doctor's offices, lawyers, in the school offices and local galleries in Vegas and Boulder City."

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I was a terrible student in school, but I was good at artwork, so I taught myself to paint pictures, that's what I was good at and the schools passed me through the grades based on my artwork. By the 1970's I was 19-20 years old, married, and had started a family. I was painting miniature paintings in oil glazes using copal resins, down to 1 Yz" square. My eyes and hands were young and steady. I sold almost everything I painted. I was mostly in galleries at the time. Landscapes, Still Life, and Flowers were fun, but I also painted Dreamtime, Symbols, Surrealism, never forgetting the petroglyphs I saw as a child and all of the places in the Mojave Desert around me that were full of ancient artwork in stone. There were times I would camp out under the stars next to the walls of the petroglyphs with a sleeping bag and a camp fire, and WOW! What an experience that could be. The figures and symbols would come alive and dance in the firelight. Much was learned on those nights.

I was inspired by the simplicity of Rock Art. Keep in mind this was way before these places were made into state parks where you have to pay money to see them and you are not allowed to spend the night. Inspired is a good word for what I felt about these ancient artisans. Remember these First Nations People's did not have a written language and the language they spoke did not always have words to describe the many experiences they lived through. So with much effort and trouble these artists would carve into stone the blessings, religion, hunts, battles, deaths, and births and dreamtime along with the obvious visitations of beings from the sky and spirit world. What an effort and a torment it is to depict something you can't understand, ... an event or visitation, a spiritual experience. These ancient people did not have a reference mentally, they could draw from, to clearly define these experiences. It could take weeks if not years to carve this information into stone. ​They were primitive people trying to define a technological event. This is the source I draw from when I use the words, "Techno Tribal". To a large degree this is how I view myself and the work I've been doing the past 30 or more years in New Mexico. ' My paintings are in oils, mostly on canvas, relatively smaller paintings up to 6 square feet, most approximately 2 and 3 square feet.

"What an effort and a torment it is to depict something you can't understand, ... an event or visitation, a spiritual experience."
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I see myself as a primitive, self-taught, native, capricious artist. I live in a very technological world. New Mexico has excellent light, it is somehow very full of life and color. New Mexico has a long history of artists from the ancient to the present. The climate and land is good. Southeast New Mexico, where I live, has a very mild climate, not much rain, but lots of clear days with full light. No floods, earthquakes, tornadoes or tsunamis. We have 4 seasons, it's hot in the summer, cold in the short winters and sometimes we get more wind than we like. That's about it. The light in New Mexico is full of wonder. New Mexico also has a long history of technological events, knowledge, science, rockets and
​visitations. It has a multicultural blending of the ancient with farms and ranches, and space travel. The paintings I'm doing now are of course in oils. I've been keeping a simple palette choosing to stick with primary colors and blend all the colors I need. I paint with a lot of transparent glazes, one over the other to achieve a color or effect.

​My paintings are not named. The reason behind this is simple, I do not want to influence the viewer's imagination. A name to me is like a fence, it defines an area and restricts the mindsight of the viewer. If I name a painting "Bobs Apple Cart", because there's red in the painting, but nothing else can be related to the name, the viewer could pull up a brain bubble or even pull a muscle, who knows what. So I've been giving them a number based on the date they were finished. It suits the paintings I've been doing as of late. Also, these paintings aren't necessarily about what is painted or the subject, but more about how it's painted. (Not what, but how). These paintings are not about a thing - they are things in themselves. I find myself organic, of the earth, but woke to self, organic consciousness, aware of my own thoughts, producing works of a vestigial nature dealing with pareidolia, allegory, egregores, psychometry. 

These paintings are truly, "more at else". The brain is a thing, an organ. The mind is a collective place. The brain is not a storage unit, but it can access the mind field. This is what the computer people are calling, "the cloud". Everything in, on, or above us on this planet is imprinted with memory. Symbols are the key, the Lingua lgnota. Knowledge is the enemy of faith. I paint by faith in the symbols, not by the knowledge of a set procedure. In today's world we need more wonder, more magic.
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​There are literally millions of artists, artisans and craftsmen presenting visual input to the world inspiring higher levels of thinking building our societies, accessing our hopes and dreams. Thoughts and images are like pollen in the ethereal when they fall on fertile ground they take root and grow. I try to keep my work simple and not put too much specific information into the image allowing the viewer to use their own experiences and imagination. 

"I see myself as a primitive, self-taught, native, capricious artist.
I live in a very technological world."

My paintings start out in what I call notes, small sketches of a thought, a sound, a memory, or something not clearly defined. This sketch is given some attention sometimes added to or reduced to a base level when I feel the image is ready t apply it to the canvas. Then I add color as the image requires. Colors in themselves add another dimension of the symbolic process, they also have a language. Thoughts are things, ideas possess people. The subconscious offers a deep level of support to thought. Dreams are not in us like the internet, but are in or on all things printed or recorded on all that surrounds us. The brain is a thing, a mind is a place. I have of course experimented with different mediums, paints of all kinds, colored pencils, crayons, chalk, pastels, wax, ink, over the past, almost 60 years; I have always come back to oil paints. I like them for their permanence, their strength, they are forgiving, they take time, they have depth. In my life I see them as a gift given to me at a very early age, I've got a long history with them and they suit me. In some of my paintings you may find numbers. They are a part of a simple transfer code very simple and old.

​It is used as a way to add depth, clues, and mystery, not a secret but more at private. I don't always have something to look at as a model to paint from. Most of the time I paint what is hard to see or can't be seen. I don't paint the tissue, but that which connects the tissue. (What's in between) Thought forms that are autonomous, independent, not subject to control from outside. A trace, track or a print, or a visible sign left by something vanished or lost, "Techno Tribal”.


Website: www.thomasbromley.artspan.com