Thomas LaGue

Nashville, TN

“Being handicapped has been very impactful in my life.”

Thomas LaGue’s work is shaped by a shift that reordered nearly everything about his daily life, physical and otherwise. "Everything is different about how I live daily physically, and also holds a challenge about my perception of self." That shift asked him to reconsider not just how he moves through the world, but how he understands himself within it.

Rather than settle into that challenge, Thomas has leaned into it. "I have found this new perception of myself to be very disruptive and rewarding and exciting," he says — and that disruption now feeds directly into how he approaches his art.

What might surprise viewers is the tone that has emerged from this period. "Strangely, I feel my art is more optimistic than before my disability." His work doesn't dwell on limitation; instead, it reflects a renewed, more hopeful way of seeing.

Over time, Thomas has developed a visual vocabulary of shapes and lines that is entirely his own. Certain shapes recur across many of his pieces; he considers them archetypal. "I have a particular vocabulary of shapes that repeat throughout many of my works. I feel them to be archetypal." He's equally drawn to building space within a piece- using line and shape to suggest depth and movement across the composition.

For thirty years, Thomas made his living as a faux finish painter, using paint to simulate marble, malachite, lapis, tortoise, wood grains, and other natural materials on walls, columns, furniture, and other structures and objects. That long immersion in organic surfaces still informs his work. "I think after being immersed in such organic subjects, it is easy to see how traces of these show up in my paintings."

Thomas's practice is informed by a long-standing interest in spiritual philosophies from around the world, one that has taken him to India twice to visit a guru. That same attentiveness carries into the studio, in the rhythm and breath he brings to a composition. "The compositions, and my playful, spontaneous strokes and lines, convey energy, hold emotion, and can tell a story in the way that poetry or modern dance does." 

For Thomas, working with ArtLifting fills a specific gap. "It is an opportunity to have help in promoting my art, which is an area that I am not confident in doing," he says. Being a wheelchair user adds a practical limit on top of that: "I cannot go out to promote my work easily." The partnership gives him a way to get his art in front of people without that being a barrier.

Thomas usually starts a piece with a problem to solve — a color, a line, a shape he wants to work through. The prompt can come from almost anywhere. "These can be inspired by many things," he says, "ranging from shadows on the wall to a palette used by a favorite painter." From that single constraint, a piece takes shape.
Thomas continues to create from this vantage point- one shaped by disruption, redefined by curiosity, and expressed with real optimism.