Dear [FNAME],

It feels absurdly early to say this, but here goes: happy holiday season! The displays at Lowe's suggest we've been in it for weeks. Do you still have Halloween munitions in a bowl by your front door? Maybe it's time to shift them into a pair of socks hanging from the mantel.

Debut of the new book

Speaking of non sequiturs: The book! Copies of my new book of gouache paintings are arriving shortly. In fact, you can order The Intimate Landscape today. Books will start to ship by early December, easily in time for Christmas if that makes a difference for you or a giftee. I will have a limited number of copies available at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art bookstore's holiday market event on Saturday, December 7, from 10 - 4 pm in Greensburg, Pennsylvania.

The Intimate Landscape reproduces – at full scale – 148 selected new paintings completed between this year and 2006, when my last gouaches book went to press. It features my notes on every painting and a foreword by Barbara L. Jones, Curator Emerita at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

To order, there's a special web page for my subscribers which includes a limited-time price for adding on my 2007 book, Gouaches. Further info here.  Otherwise, all my books and catalogues are now available at this page.

And just to put a sticky note here (shhhh!): plans are afoot for a solo museum exhibition (2026-2027) focused on the gouache paintings found in both books. Details of that exhibition will come in a more timely newsletter.

Contact me if you have any questions about the new book or anything else! Paquette.studio@gmail.com

Onoko Falls, 54 x 40

Returning from Ottawa, and departing for Monrovia

After being displayed for three years at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa, Canada, Onoko Falls will return to the U.S. at the completion of Ambassador David Cohen's post in January, 2025. If you are interested in purchasing this painting (54 x 40 inches, oil on linen, quite large!), now is a good time to consider it. Paquette.studio@gmail.com  

In other Art-in-Embassies business at the Department of State, two other works (Sanctuary and Sky Ascending, pictured below) will be installed next month at the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia. Ambassador Mark Toner may have seen my paintings installed at the U.S. Embassy to Brussels NATO, or at CSCE in Vienna when he worked at those places; in any case he requested my paintings to accompany his mission in Liberia, and I was happy to oblige. This is the twenty-second embassy and fifth continent (now I am only missing Australia and Antarctica – which I am fairly certain doesn’t have a climate-controlled embassy) for which my paintings were chosen by State Department curators and ambassadors. I feel greatly honored to be asked to help represent our nation in this way.

Sanctuary Between Cities, 28 x 42

Sky Ascending, 36 x 46

Prize winner coming off the wall of the State Museum soon

And finally, the Art of the State exhibition at the State Museum of Pennsylvania ends January 5. My painting G.H. Old-Growth Forest (36 x 74 inches, oil/linen) was awarded third prize in painting from the 2,200 works entered (96 were shown) in the museum's annual exhibition of contemporary Pennsylvania art. Another humbling experience for which I am grateful.
G.H. Old-Growth Forest, below, will be available at my solo exhibition at Gross McCleaf Gallery (Philadelphia) in May, 2025.

GH Old-Growth Forest, 36 x 74

 

I'll sign off with my best wishes for a peaceful, happy season and new year. (Yikes, did I really just write that? Do I need to break out some noisemakers already?).

If you have any questions or comments, I am all ears! Or all keys on a keyboard, as the case may be.
814-726-2266 / paquette.studio@gmail.com

Thank you for subscribing, I do appreciate it.

-Thomas