Born in NYC, Tom attended Pratt Institute in 1968, a turbulent era and the beginnings of the gay rights movement. His paintings at the time reflected a queer ethos and when he later studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, his art expanded to include video and photography of drag performance and dressing and audio recollections of a queer childhood. Returning to NYC, his paintings explored gay themes and non-figurative abstraction and he exhibited his work in galleries in NYC. Moving to Maine in 2016, he continues to explore both gay themes and abstraction.
“The drawings and paintings are about fantasies and feelings, memory and desire, and activity and adventure. They represent dreamlike spaces, inner realities and expressions of rapture and emotional connectedness. I sometimes like to use narratives that are a bit open ended, somewhat ambiguous, as to allow more possibilities for interpretations. The images are inspired by surrealism, pornography, comic books, super heroes and gay archetypes."