Home Portraits

Inspiring Smiles Forever

Complete Works, Portraits, Landscapes, Still Lifes, Sculpture, Lego Artist...

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Working on a complicated family home painting makes for mixing things up a bit. Herman Melville and William Adolphe Bouguereau would be in their studios all day and others did not really know what they did in there, Tom's wife thinks the same thing. It is fun to think they were working all the time on the work but they were not unlike Tom, answering letters, cleaning, working on peripheral things; spending a lot of time working on refining the craft, researching, making new devices and procedures that make the work fun and easier. After years of wanting to make videos of painting as it happens it was not until recently Tom set up a technique to do just that. It came together when he found a contraption to hold documents while typing, similiar to a desk top lamp that clamps on the table and allows you to move it all around. It makes it possible to sneak into the painting space with a USB cable video camera.

In painting a complicated work the question comes up, “Is it worth it?”
Working to duplicate the old masters, taking time to study and produce, is the resource which is bottomless. Money may be in short supply but there is always plenty of time. Giving the work all the time it needs to achieve success is the least the artist can do. Material goods may be in short supply but never to the level of preventing work. No one askes how long did it take? They think the artist took as long as he wanted.
If an artist is attempting to emulate an old master work wouldn’t that mean he would spend as long as he needed? The artist is not setting the standard, the standard is already set.
Though it takes months to paint such a work and the payment is a fraction of the time spent, is this a good use of the artist’s time? He enjoys matching the level of work and spending hours in front of a charming painting, albeit to him; not unlike sitting in a museum.

Fine oil painting of a home in the old Dutch manner by Tom Lohre.

Evanswood Home, 20" x 16", Traditional Dutch Manner, July 20, 2016

Devou Park, Covington, Kentucky, Shelter House, 20" x 16", oil pastel on metal, September 13, 2014
Tom grew up at the corner on Montague and Breckinridge. He remembers seeing the nightly dances at the shelter house when the juke box would play every night and the cars would line up and drive by. David Mann was a young driving teen at the time. Something happened to stop the impromptu dances for they stopped around 1959. Later, after “The Great Escape” with Steve McQueen, motorcycles would drive over the hills of the park and they put a stop to that.
He remembers every picnic table filled on the weekend. Ball fields were every twelve-hundred feet full of players till well after dusk.
Auctioned off at 2014 FreshArt, Berhringer-Crawford Museum, 1600 Montague Road - Devou Park Covington, KY 41011 859-491-4003
http://www.bcmuseum.org

French Home, oil on canvas, 10" x 8", 2010

Clifton Family, 24" x 20", oil on canvas, December 2009

Sunderland Home II, 24" x 20", Oil on canvas, September 2009

Sunderland Home, 7" x 5", Oil on board, September 2009

Tallarigo Home, 20" x 16", Oil pastel melted on metal, 2008

Devou Park Clubhouse, 16" x 12", oil on board, September 21, 2008

Devou Park Clubhouse, 16" x 12", oil on board, September 2007

Devou Park Clubhouse, 16" x 12", oil on board, September 2006

Rabbithash Kentucky II, 16" 12", oil on board, August 2005

Clifton Ridge Home, 10" x 8", December 6, 2003

The Clifton cow "Cincy Freedom" Takes a Break From Her Escape

Evanswood Home, 16" x 12", oil on canvas, used on the cover of the Clifton Chronicle, 2001

Chester Salisbury's Still Life, Oct 2001, Oil on canvas, 16" x 20", 2000

Slater Road, Morrisville NC, February 9, 1999, Oil on canvas, 16" x 12"

1064 Emerson Road, Park Hills, Kentucky 41011, 10" x 8", Oil on faux silver leaf on canvas, 1998

Groeber Home, 20" x 16", watercolor on paper, 1997

Bingham Home, 20" x 16", Watercolor on paper, 1996

Irish Home, Oil on canvas, 16" x 12", 1996

Oil on canvas, 16 x 12", Spring 1996

Morrison Place

Irving Berlin’s Home, Oil on canvas, 10” x 8”, October 1996

Bahamian Home, 20" x 16", watercolor on paper, 1995

Savana Home, Watercolor on paper, 20" x 16", 1995, Testimonial, Home portraits, Commission, Watercolor

Greengus Home, 1994, 20" x 16", Home portraits, Commission, Watercolor

Berning Home, 20" x 16", oil on canvas, 1994, Home portraits, Commission

Kershaw Home, 16" x 12", oil on canvas, 1993, Home portraits, Commission

French Dairy Farm, 20” x 16”, 1990
Painted on location outside of Geneva, Switzerland, Tom was in Monte Carlo on commission and while in Europe paid a visit to his friends in Geneva. Tom stayed in Ferney-Voltaire fifteen miles outside of Geneva. Voltaire’s Chateau is right behind this farm house which probably served the Chateau. Tom spent ten days painting on a stone bench across the street. He never met the family. No one came over to see what he was doing. Later Tom sent them a coffee cup with the painting on it but never heard back from them.