Thomas Campbell is a self-taught painter ,sculpture, photographer, and filmmaker. He splits his time between his painting/sculpture/stuff making studio in Bonny Doon, California and traversing the globe making films.
Campbell's artworks combine scribbles and scriptures, taking slogans and anecdotes from his unique vocabulary and juxtaposing them with a profound look at human nature. His movement-oriented paintings are as layered with meaning as they are with paint. The works, typically composed of several panels, are free-flowing, with wide expressionist swipes of colour, bold graphics and intricate renderings of characters and text. His photographs mimic the intensity of the paintings, yet in a more abstract fashion.
Campbell has mounted solo exhibitions in New York, Paris, Tokyo, Denmark, the Netherlands, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Morocco. In 1999, he completed his first feature length surfing film, ‘The Seedling’, and in 2004 released his second, ‘Sprout’. In 2009 he completed ‘The Present’.
Campbell was also part owner and creative director of a small, independent record label based in Santa Cruz, California, called Galaxia. Established in 1993, Galaxia has released records by contemporary artists Tommy Guerrero, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Peggy Honeywell and The Black Heart Procession, among others.
In 2013 Campbell started a new creative platform called UM YEAH ARTS which is a nexus for the making of books, music and films.
