Tom
Joyce.

About the Artist

What happens when you stop thinking and start moving.

Tom Joyce — the professional name of Thomas McManus — is a New York painter who teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology and has spent decades testing what paint can do when the artist gets out of the way. His “Jump Series” works were made by dipping a pogo stick in black paint and hopping across canvas. They were photographed in Croton Falls, New York, at Lift Trucks — a building that understands that art-making doesn’t always require a stool and an easel.

McManus studied at Pratt Institute and the Art Students League. His career spans fine art and commercial work — he contributed to the Absolut Vodka advertising campaign and received a commission from Prudential Insurance in 2013. He writes art criticism under his own name, with pieces published on Art World Confidential covering Duchamp, Basquiat, Balthus, Albert Oehlen, Elaine Sturtevant, and Paul Rand.

The pogo stick paintings are not a stunt. They are an application of a serious idea — one with roots in Sol Lewitt’s instruction to Eva Hesse (“Practice being stupid, dumb, unthinking, empty”) and Picasso’s observation that every child is an artist, the problem being how to remain one as an adult. McManus made those paintings here, at Lift Trucks, in 2017. The building has a way of giving people permission to try things.

“If you can’t make it good, make it big.”

Art World Confidential