Arthur Thrall was an American painter and printmaker. His works have been shown in more than 500 exhibits in the United States and abroad including England, Finland, Germany, and U.S. embassies. Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel art critic James Auer said Thrall is one to "defy the dictates of fashion" and "whose high-styled uses of calligraphy rival those of the great age of the Ottomans." His work explores the abstract qualities of the alphabet and recalls "the elegant hand scripts in ceremonial documents and proclamations of an earlier age," re-creating "the tensions and rhythms emerging from a historic document."