THOR ART

Throughout his life, Bob Thoresen has been driven by interlocking creative passions: his professional life as an urban planner, creating the built environ- ments in which we live, and his parallel work as a creative artist in multiple mediums. These twin outlets strengthened and reinforced each other, building in Thoresen a steady belief in the human potential to shape and enhance the world around us.

His artistic journey started in earnest in 1968, when he created several abstract art works, many infused with social commentary influenced by the turmoil of the 1960s. He continued to produce abstract and social commentary art in bursts over the following decades. Thoresen’s output surged in the early 1990s when he took a sabbatical to conduct a serious study of artistic techniques and individuals, coming under the influence of artists such as Richard Diebenkorn, Robert Rauchenberg, and later Ellsworth Kelly, Donald Judd and others.

Exploring the interplay of vivid color, textures, planes, and found objects, Bob experiments with the use of acrylics, scrap metal, computer parts, cardboard, plastic, and consumer product boxes to create paintings and sculptures. Always challenging himself to experiment with new techniques, the only constant in his art is change.

Thoresen’s passion also led to a distinguished career as an urban planner, his- toric preservationist, and development consultant over a period of fifty-five years. In the 1970s, he served as the City of Portsmouth’s planning director, leading a team that transformed the trajectory of the city’s revitalization for decades. After launching a planning consulting firm with his wife, he later served as a consultant to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in their ground-breaking Main Street Program to revitalize downtowns all across the country. During his career, he frequently lectured and wrote articles and news- paper columns on downtown revitalization, architecture, and changes in urban form, and he received awards for journalism in planning and for revitalizing historic structures over many years.