Tom Gilleon captures his dreams in entrancing paintings in a new exhibition titled Dream Catcher at Shari Brownfield Fine Art. In early 2020, when people around the world self-reflected during times of tumult and upheaval, so did contemporary Western painter Tom Gilleon. As he pondered his approach to his art, he realized that new questions arose more often than answers. So, at 80 years old, Gilleon determined it was time for a change. He let go of a lifetime as a career artist painting what was expected of him, and instead began to paint purely for the love of painting. View the exhibition online
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Tom Gilleon is an artist who has lived a lifetime of creative experiences. From being hired by NASA to illustrate the Saturn and Apollo programs in the 1960s, to becoming a highly revered Disney Imagineer who created the conceptual drawings of EPCOT and many other iconic Disney theme parks in the 1970s and 80s, no one imagined that becoming a Montana rancher would be his next step in the 1990s. It should therefore come as little surprise that after beginning a full time career as a fine artist in the 2000s, GIlleon quickly gained gallery representation and a strong collector following, and by 2013 earned the title of being the first living artist to be honored with a solo exhibition at the C.M. Russell Museum.
Despite all these successes, in early 2020 Gilleon realized that there was yet another path ahead for him. As he sat on a flight, with a bird’s eye view of the land where his Scottish grandfather immigrated and where his grandmother, a full blooded Cherokee, raised him, he wrote himself a note. “What if an artist knew his next painting would be his last? What would he choose to paint? [Would he] make every stroke purposeful, effective, and masterful? Would the paint flow effortless or would [the] hand create a bloody battlefield?” And so he sought to find out.
Today, Gilleon wants to share his thoughtful attempts to answer his own questions in a new exhibition titled Dream Catcher, hosted at Shari Brownfield Fine Art in downtown Jackson, WY. Light and darkness, contrast and harmony, balance each of the artist’s paintings in the exhibition, which include small gestural landscape watercolors to large, ethereal floating figures. In each painting the viewer can see traces of the intermingling of the artist’s distinct roots, and how their convergence, six decades later, play out. In one of the paintings, titled Brulé, Gilleon showcases his mastery of paint in a return to familiar subjects, such as his beloved glowing teepee’s – yet this time the scene glows from the intensity of the fire that consumes it.
Dream Catcher can be viewed at Shari Brownfield Fine Art, located at 55 South Glenwood Street from August 15 to October 15, 2022. A special reception, hosted by First Republic Bank, will be held on September 17th, during the Fall Arts Festival, from 3:00 - 6:00pm. The artist will be in attendance, available for conversation and discussion about his paintings.