“ All art is some sense by and about human beings, but Shanti Thomas is one of those who works directly with the human image, human relationships, visible and invisible responses to events between human beings. She belongs to England and is at home here but her roots in Italy and India make her English roots different, she may be especially sensitive to feelings of transience, displacement. To represent people she has to find pictorial emblems for them, for the feelings she credits them with, for her own experience of them and the hopes and the fears for them and for herself.”

Extract from Norbert Lynton’s essay on ‘Shanti Thomas at Gatwick Airport' - 1994

"By the sea under the yellow and sagging moon, the messenger there aroused, the fire, the sweet hell within,
the unknown want, the destiny of me."
Walt Whitman