RESIDUALS

Interiors and Exteriors by Dean Thomas

Closing Reception & Artist Talk: Sunday, March 29th from 2PM to 5PM (Talk at 2:30PM)

Exhibition On Display: Feb. 13th through Mar. 29th, 2026

Portland Museum is proud to host this solo exhibition of works from Portland-based painter and musician Dean Thomas. In RESIDUALS: Interiors and Exteriors by Dean Thomas viewers are invited into spaces constructed around mysterious remnants of heavy industry and domestic mundanity. This “residual anthropomorphism,” as described by the artist, visually explores the past and purpose of individual objects, arranging them into storage units and salvage yards to assert their eventual reuse.

“When someone built this stuff, they built it with the intention of providing a service that would somehow help humans,” said Thomas in an interview with Portland Museum, “they sort of created a spirit in that machinery, and now it’s sitting there going ‘are you ever going to use me again?’ It still has value.”

Thomas was raised in Louisville’s Valley Station, and has lived for periods in Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles. He has resided in the Portland neighborhood, within walking distance from Portland Museum, for the past eight years. While the painted scenes of RESIDUALS are majorly inventions of the artist, they are recognizable reflections of Portland’s richly storied, hard living landscapes, with many of the objects depicted first discovered on the neighborhood’s sidewalks and undeveloped lots. “I’ve been fascinated with Portland since I was a teenager,” recalled Thomas, “I would just drive around, wanting to get into Nelligan Hall.”

Thomas’s interest in the potential that makes us set-aside, and the short distance between the in-waiting and the discarded, resonates in unique registers when displayed in the long overlooked, ever-reviving Portland. What does the treatment of these items express about the treatment of our neighbors?

Thomas maintains a gallery space of his own on Main Street, and offers private studio visits. For more information on the artist visit his website at the link below: