Thomas Ray Willis

WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN (NEAREST OBJECTS REPRISED)

Flame, smoke, and blue painter’s tape on watercolor paper
2025
96 x 96”

“Will the Circle Be Unbroken (Nearest Objects Reprised),” was showcased at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY, as part of their exhibition “DRAW: HEAT,” running from September 19, 2025–January 11, 2026.

In the piece, I return to the process of drawing with fire and smoke that first shaped my practice more than a decade ago. This piece is built from the objects of my family’s life -- beer cans, chewing tobacco, bullets, pipes, figurines, crucifixes, knick-knacks, and other belongings both cherished and disposable. Burned into six panels of watercolor paper, they form a large mandala-like circle that repeats, spins, and fractures. They radiate in symmetry, at once orderly and volatile. Through this pattern, I ask whether cycles of poverty, addiction, and resilience that mark my upbringing can remain unbroken.

Within the Hudson River Museum exhibition “DRAW: HEAT,” my contribution engages heat in both literal and symbolic ways. The burn marks recall the Nevada desert sun I grew up under and the fire that once damaged my mom’s home. Heat also represents the weight of generational habits and the pressure they create. By burning these images into paper, I turn an act of destruction into a record of lived experience. The drawing becomes a transcendent site where trauma and persistence exist side by side.

This work also continues my “Nearest Objects” series. Earlier, I burned the objects people carried with them, or the everyday materials that filled a gallery space. Critics at the time focused on the meditative, precise quality of those mandala forms. Returning to the series now, I turn that same process inward. After years of teaching, building a family, and working in New York, I am looking back at the objects that shaped me.

The title comes from a song my father played for me as a child. It asks if the family circle will endure in the afterlife. Must the circle hold, or will it break? Can fire purify, or does it only consume? My work leaves the question unresolved. For me, the act of burning and repeating these images is a way to face the cycle, and to see if I can transform it.