"When I was 30 I was a wastrel, without dedication or direction. It was about that time that I came to understand that my life was about creating what in this society is known as art. That realization has enabled me to guide and direct my life since then. This is a comforting stability to me. It allows me to face all kinds of decisions with a reliable guidepost in front of me, and has given my life personal meaning. Art is the detritus of the creative act, and creating is a worthwhile goal for my life." ~ Roger V Thomas

Born in Los Angeles in 1951, Thomas worked as a taxidermist, histopathological technologist and Formica carpenter before discovering that "the only work I have done that satisfied my visceral yearning is called art." Although he has a liberal arts degree, the acquisition of his artistic skills has been purely "autodidactic." He likes to say that the relationship of his art to formal education is casual rather than causal.

Thomas describes his artistic career as "something that sneaked up on me" after he entered the world of glass art in the early 1970s working in stained glass and restoring work built by Tiffany Studios a century before. Ultimately, he learned to make the glass itself.("Rose Window" 1982). His technical training allowed him to charge ahead, experimenting and creating new techniques and producing works with subtlety of detail, color and form.

As his expertise in glass grew, he found himself in demand to consult with architectural art firms and glass manufacturers as well as teach glass art.Thomas grew frustrated after a decade of work in stained glass, and turned to a more personal artistic vision and the flexibility of kilnformed glass in the mid-1980s. Although he began by combining stained and fused glass ("The Albatross" 1986), he soon found himself inventing new glass techniques. His technical background gave him the ability to modify and invent within the glass medium; and his vision took him beyond what he knew.

1988 was a year of transition for Thomas. He met and assisted Bertil Vallien, Paul Marioni, and Herny Halem at Pilchuck during the summer, and then a homeward stop at his favorite Portland, Oregon glass factory led to a job heading production there. He and JoAnn (Master Gardener, interior designer, teacher and world traveler) then stepped into "the karmic funnel of fate" as they married and moved to Portland.

Within three years of the move to Portland, Thomas had established the Roger V Thomas Studio and began to devote himself exclusively to his glass art. One of his experimental pieces from this early period, "Cosmos I"(1990), is now in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute.

"Techni-Koi" (1989) was an important transitional piece. It was the first in Thomas' new technique in which he layers the glass painting backwards, never seeing the front of the image until it emerges from the kiln. It was also the first expression of his "hatching" technique using "streamer" glass for which the Bullseye Glass Company commissioned this work and used it to market their new style of glass.

Thomas' first solo show of fused glass was at Gango Gallery in Portland in 1995. Now comfortable with his technique, Thomas began experimenting with his imagery. One of the pieces featured in this show, "The Birch" (1995), was his first diptych and his first featuring birch as a subject. Aspen and birch trees have since become an icon in his work, and many of his works are composed of multiple panels.

Thomas had also begun experimenting with allegorical themes and abstraction in "Illiterate Epiphany Rosetta" (1996) and "You Never Ask for Directions" (1996), part of his Cosmos series and inspired by a conversation with JoAnn.

Personal icons that recur in Thomas' work include fish, and Koi in particular, such as in "Kohaku Showa Tancho" (1999).He creates each scale individually, and gives the scene depth with frit, stringers of glass and touches of mica. This rendering speaks to the fluid nature of the medium of kilnformed glass and the artist's love of energetic, loose pastels.

"Stolen Temple" (1999), reflects on Roger's interest in architecture. This was a significant move from his work reflecting natural forms and textures, and required developing a glass vocabulary that could reflect constructed forms without giving in to the simplistic geometry that these materials can so easily produce. He looked to the work of Roualt, a painter who was the son of a stained glass artist, and the contemporary painting of Joseph Raffael when developing this lexicon. This work presaged a critical shift that was to come in his work a few years later.

Thomas' work began a change in both aesthetic and technique in the fall of 2001 with a piece called Cadmium Park. Several other pieces, such as "Cadmium Park Reflecting Pool" (2002) take the viewer on a tour of this mythical park.Others, such as "Last Light" (2002) create new combinations of architectural and natural themes.

In creating these pieces, he re-developed his technique to capture the translucency and flow of light and glass, leaving the edges untrimmed as a reminder of the liquidity of glass in the kiln. His California roots and connection to the composition and palette of the California Plein Air painters can be seen in this series. He is calls these new works "The Impressions."