Shauna: First, I’d like to thank you for taking the time

to talk with us about our upcoming show, “Merriment,

Magic and Music” at the YWCA and your role in judging

it. This is part of an on-going discussion about the

challenges and joys of judging a show and, as with our

earlier interview with Dede Young who judged our

Bendheim show, we’ll have a conversation before you

adjudicate the show and after. It seems to me that there

are as many ways to judge a show as there are judges,

and I am very interested in the process. As you are both

an artist and a teacher at the Greenwich Art Society

Studio School, I am particularly interested in your point

of view.
 
Let’s start with you and your art. I know a little bit about

you from your faculty bio on our website: that you paint

in a realistic style, work in graphic design, animation,

illustration and package design. This strikes me as a

wonderfully pragmatic approach that has kept you

employed as an artist. Not easy! Tell us about the

artistic path you took that brought you to where you

are now.
 
Tom: Well, I majored in fine art at Yale as an undergraduate.

Realizing that I was going to have to take one of several

paths to make it a viable career, I studied illustration at

Art Center College of Design. The school is a rough

equivalent to RISD and is located in Los Angeles. Very

demanding. Shortly after finishing my studies there, I was

invited by some friends to join a small animation studio in

Cos Cob (and later in Stamford). I became a partner there.

We did mainly commercials, openings for HBO etc. At a

certain point, I was hired away by Guy Gilchrist, one of

Jim Henson’s (of Muppets fame), art directors. He was just

starting his own group of characters that were being used

for toys, publishing and all sorts of things. I was his Senior

Art Director and was with him for 6 years. I left him to become

a freelance illustrator. It was during the time I was working

with Guy that I started teaching – the early 80’s. My first

teaching was for Greenwich Art Society and Greenwich

Continuing Education. I’ve been teaching at Silvermine for

about 10 years and at various campuses of Gibbs College

for 6 years. I have taught computer graphics, and right now

I’m teaching fashion – Photoshop and Illustrator. I also teach

Early Education Pedagogy. (teaching art teachers how to

teach art to young children) at Housatonic Community College.
 
Shauna: What was it that initially interested you about

commercial art?
 
Tom: The real reason I went out to California to study

illustration was that the education I received at Yale, which

was great, was not oriented toward realism which was what

I was interested in. I wanted to continue as a fine artist in a

realistic style and needed rigorous training in a those

techniques. Art Center College was the sort of place one had

to go for that. I didn’t really have any idea where it would take

me as a career choice. I was just honing my technique and

working on disciplined training. The animation studio found

my skills to be perfect for what they had in mind that and

launched me on the commercial part of my artistic life.
 
Shauna: Tell me a little about your fine art.
 
Tom: During my studies, I continued painting and drawing

and did some serious traveling in India. I did a lot of drawing

there. When I returned to the East Coast, I began showing

through the art societies and within a year a so, started to do

some commissioned portraits. As I improved, I found some

galleries that were interested in displaying my work. Right now

I am still represented by galleries in Massachusetts, Westchester

county, Bridgeport and Darien.
 
Shauna: What is it that attracts you about a realistic style?
 
Tom: To tell you the truth, my father got me interested in

photography at a very early age. I was using a darkroom at

age 7. A lot of my subject matter springs from the sort of stuff

I shot even when I was very young, specifically people in urban

settings. That’s a subject that can be handled in many styles

but the artists that I always admired the most (Hopper, Degas,

Vermeer) frequently dealt with that subject in a realistic style.

I think I gravitated towards them because they have a very strong

relationship with light and dark which obviously is a central concern

in black & white photography.
 
Shauna: Do you like other styles of art?
 
Tom: YEAH! Absolutely! I get annoyed when people dismiss a

work as ‘just the emperor’s new clothes”. Say, like an all white

painting or whatever. I look at it and, even though it isn’t the sort

of thing I paint, I find myself interested in the surface technique,

the subject matter – whatever is intriguing about the piece. A lot of

people dismiss realism and that annoys me, too. Narrow mindedness

doesn’t have a place in art. Many of the same issues are at play

regardless of style or medium.
 
Shauna: Are there particular issues that interest you more

than others?
 
Tom: Yes, but they are so broad it sounds ridiculous. I love color.

Surface quality is very important to me. That’s why I often work in

pastel. Balance too, a vague term but I would think most people

know what I mean by it