Artist
Thomas Arnold
Thomas Arnold is a multidisciplinary artist based in Edinburgh. He graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a BA (Hons) in Painting in 2025, receiving the Helen A Rose Bequest for graduate work and selection for Visual Art Scotland’s Graduate Showcase. In 2024, he was awarded a major bursary from The Supporting Act Foundation. Thomas collects fragments of lived experience - memories, conversations, dreams - and stories from neglected queer histories. His written and visual work often overlap, and both take the form of a collage of emotionally resonant fragments. In visual work, motifs of elusive male figures and short written observations recur in deep yellows and blues in handmade books and wall works, which centre drawing and painting. Written work has recently focused on queer shame and the violence of repressed queerness, examining the difficulty of translating a rich, queer internal world into an external reality. Piecing together these fragments allow him to construct narratives which are often hidden, stories of queerness, connection, shame, anger, joy, otherness, and observation. Striving to communicate the essence of experience, he hopes others feel touched and seen.
Thomas Arnold, Chest
