Thomas Stokes III (b. 1997) is a San Antonio–based artist whose practice spans both traditional and digital media, grounded in a self-taught approach that privileges intuition, experimentation, and emotional clarity. Beginning with drawing at a young age, Stokes turned to painting after high school, cultivating his craft through sustained self-directed study. Over time, his visual language evolved into a distinctive form of surreal and fragmented portraiture, marked by fluid linework and psychologically charged compositions.
Stokes’s works function as mirrors—reflecting states of self, perception, and inner tension—inviting viewers into a space where introspection and distortion coexist. By deconstructing the human face, he breaks down familiar features into organic lines and shifting contours, merging them with the silhouettes of fractured figures that feel simultaneously vulnerable and resilient. The resulting images resist fixed identity, instead presenting the figure as something in flux: unstable, searching, and deeply human.
His palette often centers on muted earth tones, punctuated by vivid bursts of color that introduce rhythm and emotional contrast. This interplay produces a sense of controlled chaos, where instinctual mark-making is balanced by compositional restraint. Across his work, Stokes pursues harmony through dissonance—using fragmentation not as rupture, but as a means of reassembly. Each painting becomes a site of negotiation between order and collapse, clarity and ambiguity, reflecting both the internal landscapes of the artist and the psychological spaces his figures inhabit.
Through this ongoing exploration, Stokes continues to refine a practice that is introspective yet expansive, personal yet widely resonant, positioning the human figure as a vessel for emotion, memory, and transformation.