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 A Sketchy Biography |
1958 |
Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, eighth of eleven children.
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1959-1977
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Being born toward the end of a long line of siblings has the great advantage of being able to do more or less what you wish. The barriers and borders of parental control have already been seriously breached by predecessors, and not much will raise an eyebrow.
Even so, Thomas' preoccupation with drawing and painting does not go unnoticed. At the age of twelve he is encouraged in his future life's work by one of the time-honored patrons of the arts, the Catholic Church. [In this case, just a Catholic school.] A nun, his sixth grade teacher who encouraged his talent, asks him make a mural, the payment being freedom from all her classes until it the mural is complete. The only question in the young boy's mind is, how can he do this more often?
He then spends the rest of his youth loitering in the art classroom and in other sorts of extracurricular trouble. In one not-unspeakable case, Thomas' 11th grade history teacher "busts" him for drawing caricatures when he was supposed to have been taking notes on the lecture. The teacher summons the boy's parents to a special meeting. The alarmed parents are shown a small pile of confiscated caricatures of U.S. presidents, history teachers, and other nefarious folks drawn during history class. Ready to mete out just punishment - such as several years of making their son pretend to care about such things - his parents are confused when the teacher says, "These drawings are really good, don't you think?" They are struck dumb when he follows this with a strong recommendation that the boy pursue a career in political cartooning. No one knows what to do now.
Thomas' political cartooning ambitions, growing under his newfound role as school newspaper cartoonist, are squelched when a year later the newspaper faculty advisor refuses to publish one of his cartoons. It sarcastically depicts a triumphant teacher, rifle in hand, posed trophy-hunterlike over a student he bagged trying to escape from a so-called pep rally. Ironically, this censorship occurs while Thomas is the paper's editor-in-chief, and should have had dictatorial powers regarding such decisions.
Just a few weeks later, he is vindicated when the University of Minnesota bestows on him a state-wide journalism award for the very same cartoon. This irony further resolves his penchant to study art, despite having read a book of Vincent van Gogh's letters and perceiving the inherent difficulties of functioning as an artist. He refuses to spend his days working toward some imagined security if it means losing even hours in art. He enrolls in the Studio Art program at the University of Minnesota, thinking there must be a way forward there.
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1977-1985
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His intensive art education is brought to a screeching halt when Thomas is galvanized by the idea that upon reaching majority age for college, voting, driving, and alcohol, he might also be elegible for outsized adventures. He is drawn to the open road, drops out of school, and spends a few years vagabonding and crisscrossing the country via the highway and "the rails". His freight-train hopping and hitchhiking bring him as far as the Yukon Territory and Alaska. Between some of these adventures he enrolls in Red Wing Technical Institute to learn the trade of welding to help enable an itinerant lifestyle. The stories from those trips could fill a book, which is precisely why none will be told here.
Eventually the wanderer returns to Minnesota to go back to college, and ends up going to a few more: Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Northland College, and finally ends his undergraduate work at Bemidji State University on the edge of Minnesota's great northern wilds. There - despite his best efforts just to paint in a studio undisturbed - he graduates Summa Cum Laude with a BFA degree in Painting.
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1985-1988
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Paquette is awarded a Graduate Fellowship from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and finds the experience well worth it: The three-year Master of Fine Art program at SIUE offers 50% more respite from reality than most graduate painting programs, which are typically no more than two years. He discovers that, instead of the cut-throat competition that everyone imagines of the shark tank called "graduate school", he enjoys the camaraderie of many dedicated faculty and graduate students. For most of each day, he is surrounded by others who also spend their days producing and thinking about art.
In undergraduate as well as graduate school, he experiments with classic surrealist paintings (samples), performance and conceptual art, finally returning in his sixth year of art school to his first serious passion - painting the landscape, which subtly begins with some late-night scenes (samples).
So after years of academic training in art history, theory and art, Thomas is stunned to find he has been released into the enviornment with a terminal degree in Painting. Some people have argued there should be a law preventing this, or at least institute a waiting period or warning siren.
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1988
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He establishes a third-floor studio in the Warehouse District of Minneapolis. Gets continually distracted when when his dealer - directly across the street on the same floor of another warehouse building - brings her clients to the gallery windows to show them -- across the empty void over busy First Avenue -- "what the artist is working on right now". Seeking escape, he applies for a residency in Florida. Hangs big curtains in the studio windows in the meantime.
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1989-1991
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Thomas is awarded the Florida residency: a three-year Fellowship - Residency from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts in Miami, selected by the "Dean of American Landscape Painting", Neil Welliver. Lives in Miami Beach for three winters, and travels to paint in California and at other residencies (Vermont Studio Center and Grand Marais Art Center) in the other seasons. Does not hop freight trains to accomplish these long journeys this time. As a consolation, he travels instead in a decrepit twenty-year-old Ford Econoline window van with no seats, if that helps romanticize the story in a pathetic sort of way. The van is truly unsafe at any speed, and this adds a needed sense of urgency and hi-jinx to the mix.
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1990-1991
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While on the NFAA residency, he and the two other Fellowship recipients are given annual shows at the Bass Museum of Art. Receives very good critical notice in the Miami Herald, and very bad critical notice from the police (in the form of a parking ticket of unprecedented sum) while unloading paintings from his van in front of the Museum. "Everyone's a critic."
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1991-2001
overview
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Moves to Maine and establishes a studio in Portland where parking tickets are distributed with wild abandon. Municipal fundraising confetti. This is the only shred of culture linking Miami and Portland, making the transition easy for Thomas.
Actively shows paintings around the U.S., including solo exhibitions in New York City at Fischbach Gallery; in Washington, DC, at Mahler Gallery; in Chicago at Lydon Fine Art; in Minneapolis at Flanders Contemporary Art; and in various venues in Maine and elsewhere (please see exhibitions for better details).
Partakes of several artist-residencies: Millay Art Colony, Acadia National Park, Yosemite National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, American Academy in Rome, USM/Aegean Arts and Culture Exchange.
Travels often to paint and see art in the U.S. and Europe. And Canada, let us not forget!
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1996
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Is awarded a second major commission from the State of Minnesota : a thirty-two foot oil-on-canvas painting for Central Lakes College. (In 1990, an 11-foot painting was commissioned for the Centennial State Office in St. Paul.)
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1998
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Is awarded a major commission from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis -- four large canvases to dominate the main conference room. Any significant failing of monetary policies that were formulated in that room since that time have not been expressly traced to conferees paying too much attention to the paintings instead of voting conscientiously or thinking coherently.
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1999
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Spends a month as a Guest Artist of the USM/Aegean Arts and Cultural Exchange, painting and traveling around Greece, and based on the island of Mytilini (Lesvos). Is inspired by well, just about everything about the island.
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2000
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Is granted a month-long stay at the American Academy in Rome, where he paints gouaches around Rome, predominantly around Pamphili Gardens. Holds a small exhibition of the work produced, in his studio at the AAR. Does no graffiti on the walls of Rome - this is true -, despite video-taped "evidence."
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2001
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One-artist exhibition at Georgia Museum of Art, showcasing over 70 Paquette paintings. Forgets to take the enormous outdoor museum banner with his name on it, that could stream majestically behind his car on the highway and double as a paint drop cloth when in the studio.
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2001-2003
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Moves to the picturesque town of Warren in northwestern Pennsylvania, where he maintains a studio and lives with his wife Ellen, who is versed in many visual, performing, and musical arts. Warren is centrally located three hours from Cleveland and Pittsburgh, four hours from Toronto, and very close to the Allegheny National Forest and Not Much Else. Paints.
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2004
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Continues painting full-time as he has been since graduate school, working on commissions and exhibitions.
Erects new studio. Is invited for a 6-week residency at the McNamara Foundation in Maine in spring. Later, he is compelled to choose between a ship and a ship of state: Scheduled for the same day, he is invited to board the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary 2 (where some of his paintings hang in their posh on-board collection) and also invited to the White House, per invitation of First Lady, to help celebrate forty years of State Department's Art in Embassies program (through which he has lent artwork for over a decade). Decides to go to White House since he doesn't trust his long-distance open-ocean swimming skills, and is a still just a little unconvinced by the physics which allows 150,000 tons of steel to float. .
After a day at the White House, full of fresh insights, he seriously reconsiders his history teacher's advice to make a career of political cartooning. Instead, he disappoints his high school history teacher once again and opens a one-man exhibition of paintings at the Erie Art Museum a few months later.
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2006
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At the bidding of the Art in Embassies program, is flown to Greece in an extraordinary rendition, to explain to Greek citizens why he paints. Besides the scheduled talks at the National Art Gallery and the American College in Athens and elsewhere, the Ambassador to Athens hosts a party where Thomas speaks. His comprehension of the language is limited and so he is not embarassed by what he says. The next day two daily newspapers implied that his art should have been the only one to speak (translated title of this article: "Art - the best ambassador).
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2007
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"Thomas Paquette - Goauches" book is published and an exhibition of these works travels to museums and art institutes and colleges.
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2008
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Moves a couple miles out of the town of Warren and much closer to unbridled nature, where he and his bride now live on seven wooded acres. Constructs (with the expert help of InScale Architects) a new high-efficiency, high-tech "green" studio.
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2009-Present
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Continues to paint, despite being pulled to do other things such as mowing the lawn, which has become the world's first Old-Growth lawn. Has several solo museum shows and other "incidents" like that dotting his calendar. For a real accounting, you should probably read a more exciting account. Well - more exacting.
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Postscript
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If you - as a personal acquaintance of the artist - feel important details were left out, this was done expressly to head off class-action lawsuits. Just being practical here.
....And this is where I should apologize for having adding some color to an otherwise black and white resume. But it is probably too late for that. Never regret. Or never say never. Either one. |
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