Tom Lohre, artist/scientist

Portraits and Science Mix

Tom paints portraits, commissions, landscapes, seascapes, cityscapes and outer space scenes. He also creates art machines using living mobiles, light guiding devices, whirly-gigs, biogenetics to paint with, math formulas for profile generation, mobiles of cut out silhouettes and marble sculpting. Tom is driven to create. He started as a portrait painter because he could quickly get a likeness and emulate the old masters now he paints what he or his clients want.

Artificial Artist

Being a consummate fine portrait painter has not stopped Tom from working years on a machine that paints by looking at something and painting it in real time. Lego, the toy maker, offers state of the art  interfacing of computers and machines that is used in high schools and colleges. Since 2003 Tom has been learning Lego's high level vision software RoboLab. He developed a novel way to apply rich thick color rapidly using Lego parts. Soon he will have a working machine that looks and then paints in real time interpreting the scene on the fly and then painting.

Work From Life

All the while Tom is working on his art machine he is refining his old master manner by studying the written work of the masters. Little is written by the master artist. Delacroix  and Van Gogh are well known for their treatise on painting but there is a wealth of material that sheds light of the secrets of art. The main tread that runs through this work is to "work from life."

Trained Under A Master

Tom trained under a world class portrait painter, Ralph Wolfe Cowan. After assisting Mr. Cowan in Palm Beach in 1980, Tom started traveling the circuit of Palm Beach, Nantucket and New York City.

Tom paints formal portraits in the manner of: WILLIAM ADOLPHE BOUGUEREAU 1825-1905.  These paintings are oil painted a la prima on a very smooth scrapped gessoed canvas stretched on board. The colors are as transparent as possible and all the edges are hard.

Tom paints landscapes in the manner of: JAN VAN DER HEYDEN 1637-1712. These paintings are also painted a la prima on a very smooth scrapped gessoed canvas stretched on board. Figures are completely painted although they may be as small as one inch. Trees are painted carefully and without scrumbling. All paint is applied like icing on a cake.

Current Direction

Tom is looking for something that tests his metal and still creates work that is exciting, new and novel. First he thought of creating a surround sound painting complete with chair, sound system, scents, lighting, smoke and whatever. The theme should be as if it is a movie or novel. Tom envisions a artwork that moves the viewer first and that size medium or anything should not hinder the production of the work. Elements of the painting must be exactly appropriate. The thread to the painting must have a greater appeal where it can be played over and over in endless variations.

Tom started this current direction painting his daughter in a series of somewhat black and white portraits of his daughters face with little vignettes in the background of the inner city of Cincinnati. The series evolved into young women in landscapes, small works with detailed figures.

If You Feel It, It Will Come

What makes a thing beautiful or stimulating is unknown but people know it when they see it. Great artists just paint what they want to paint without regard for the viewer.

His Best Work

Tom's best work is landscapes painted from life and refined studio portraits. But both styles are painted using a well developed painting manner that revealed colors and strokes more suited to make the surface exciting and the color working well with each other rather than letting nature dictated the color.

Personal Statement

Studies

Having been a working fine artist since 1978, I am in the position to give advice on the subject. I was always one of the best artists in my class during grade school and high school. In college things started getting a little gray and diluted with thousands of classmates. It was not until I was in my third year of college that I met my mentor. I had been struggling along in some art classes at the University of Kentucky for two years and Northern Kentucky for one year without direction. I saw some classical paintings in a bar in Lexington, Kentucky and the next time I was there I sought out the artist. The bartender pointed out Ralph Wolfe Cowan at the bar and we became friends. As it turned out he had had twin sons, which he had given up as a young man and since my identical twin brother and I met him at the same time we went back to his studio.  

In the first twenty minutes I had all the information I would need to paint like an old master. By seeing the brushes, mixed colors and unfinished canvas, I was able to get the gist of how to paint. It was then only a matter of about three years before I somewhat mastered the technique.  

I graduated from Northern Kentucky University with a Bachelor in Art, majoring in communications, minoring in painting. My field of study was writing. I was not very good at writing. I did not need any help in art, so I studied something I needed help in.  

I moved to New York City and worked at a Madison Avenue advertising agency. I spent a year doing the nuts and bolts of a national newspaper campaign. The next year I worked as a board man doing paste-ups for a merchandising catalog. After 1978 I painted portraits. From 1976 to 1978 I studied anatomy. In 1980 I lived and worked with my mentor on commissions he had received from Princess Grace and Mrs. Marcos. During this time I perfected my portrait technique. Afterwards I was the artists-in-residence for a galleries for 16 years, working the Palm Beach, Key West, Atlanta, New York and Nantucket. During these years I studied color and composition. I used four oil colors only for fours years. I developed a air  and mechanical method for mixing oil colors. I continued to paint portraits and perfect my landscape manner.  

Marriage

I met my wife in 1991 while visiting my home town of Cincinnati, Ohio. We married shortly afterwards and have settled down in my hometown of Cincinnati giving up my New York City apartment of twenty years. I continue to work portraits and landscapes of which about two thirds are commissions. I also am the house husband to our daughter.

Galleries

I do not show in galleries that require a exclusive arrangement. I do show my work about four times a year as my self promotion.  

Advice to Artists

My advice to new fine artists is to take a hard look at your talents and if you have little or no trouble making and selling your art then pursue it as a career. You will need a fair amount of theoretical savvy to keep up with all the rhetoric. A sizable amount of charm will be needed in getting and keeping clients. Well-rounded social skills are a must for you will be more or less expected to know as much if not more than your clients. Although your clients will not all be wealthy they will all be cultured. To be a fine artist is to concentrate on your art and accepting remuneration for it. Find a local master and get to know him. Study under him and master his technique. Yours will come eventually. Most of your study will be on your own. You'll lead a lonely existence.

Curators and Gallery Directors

Curators and gallery directors have a cold view of art. They decide what they like through a blend of media and museum attention. The amount of media written about an artist cements his stature in history. Historians rely on media and museums, so in the end the amount of printed material on an artist decides his place in art history. The museums will own art of consequence. The artist will move art forward.

Living with My Clients

I live vicariously off my clients, spending extended time with them. Knowing where your next commission is coming from unknown.

Where My Next Buck Comes From

A combination of self promotion and personal references generate work.

Influences

Henry Fulker, a renegade Lexington, Kentucky artist traveled the wealthy circuit in much the same way I did.  Harlan Hubbard, a recluse and back to the land artist is an inspiration to me although I could not personally see myself living off the land or traveling down river on a shanty boat but I do have a affinity for his lifestyle. Joyce Cary's "The Horses Mouth," which was made into a movie in 1966 with Alex Guinness, is a excellent description of my life. I am like my mentor, Ralph Wolfe Cowan. We have a way about ourselves that makes things happen. He creates speculative portraits. I produce plein air work.

Artists I Know

Aside from my master, Ralph Wolfe Cowan these are well known artists I respect: John Ruthven, Michael Scott and Richard Young.

Various Thoughts 

Jonathan Janson, emulator of Vermeer

            In reading Jonathan Janson's treatise about painting, I found this sentence of his most illuminating: "The more layers of paint the more dust was picked up. Vermeer’s and the great majority of Dutch paintings were created by relatively straightforward opaque or semi-opaque paint layers. Glazes were employed with parsimony for very selective and specific effects."

A la Prima

            All my study has lead me to the realization that most painting was attempted to be done in one sitting, a la prima, wet on wet, because of the length of time it took to do work, even while wet, and the need to get it done and out of the studio. I use oil of cloves in the paint as well as placing the paints and if the canvas is small enough, in the freezer. At the most, I have about two weeks to paint before the paint congeals too much to work.

On Vermeer

I have my own theories about Vermeer. I would like to think he was a bar owner and painter of beautiful woman. Cheesecake means just like beefcake, beautiful young people. It just strikes me that the woman in Vermeer’s work are all very pretty and must have certainly been received well to the young and old men of the time. Cheesecake is good but maybe not the “new interpretation of lofty goals” the new admirers of Vermeer have placed on him. Did he ever write anything down about painting?

Art Vending Machine

   On our trip to the South, 2003, I discovered a novel idea for marketing and selling art. Use an old cigarette machine replacing the cigarette packs with little paintings. It turns out that a vendor solicits artwork for his machines he has placed in the North Carolina area. So now, I am looking for an old vending machine to adapt. I would like to find a machine where you see the various objects for sale and the size is about the size of a snack bag. I would love to have one on our local street.

Advise

November 2002 Seek Commissions To Advance Your Art

Seek commissions and use them to advance your own studies. Any additional artwork should be for yourself and not the trade.

I have a friend in England that paints several studies a day in the field and in the studio with the model. He places only a small value on his studies and sells them for around twenty dollars. Although he is 67 and retired, he still works harder than anyone I know to produce great work. He only listens to the sayings of the old masters. From the many sayings he has sent me, I have concluded that the old masters have no advice.

Art Mutual Fund

To predict what is on top of the art world or to try to stay on top is fruitless unless you just do what you can and let the chips fall where they may. The recognized old masters just happened to be working in a manner that was popular. They did not intend it on happening. They sought to create the most poignant art. In many ways it is like buying a index mutual fund. You produce a wide variety of art to take advantage of trends. Over time your whole portfolio increases.

I do highly suggest that you not make a mock of the art world and always endeavor to know what is on the leading edge of art. I spend a good part of my free time contemplating such edges and creating art projects that address that edge. This normally means creating art that you never would think you would do.

On Creating New Art 

July 30th, 2001 

Music, film and writing must use well define manners in creating their art Visual art does not have these restrictions. All forms of art have increased in production since the fifties. The most dramatic spread in what is art has taken place in the visual arts.

All this pressure has allowed me to expand my repertoire but it has also forced me to work as a classicist in secret. I have a burning desire to understand how Rembrandt created his etchings. I would love to see someone do similar work. The money engravers can do it but their method is top secret. Very little has been written about creating art by the artists themselves. Generally I have read that the great artists felt that all the direction you needed was to see the finished work. At this point I believe it to be true but I still would like to see someone carving like the ancients. 

On The Boston School 

July 30th, 2001 

I have come to the conclusion that the Boston School represents the realists in today’s art market.  They focus on the super real, both in application and in method. Producing art only with Northern light and making your colors by grinding seems way too heavy handed. To say that the Impressionist were started because of tube paint also seems way too simplified. In creating art I feel that the artists should use any methods available to create the biggest bang with the least amount of effort.  

The Art Scene 

May15th, 2001   

Art has not changed. The ideas keep coming from artists. Curators and dealers keep sorting through them. Both do what they want. I see the curator’s job very easy compared to the artist. The artist has his soul at stake and must continue to open new doors. Today these doors are just about anything. A street painter one year may be using ceiling wax to turn a room into a surprising artistic statement the next. The curator has a soul too and has become the artist by organizing the work the artist does. Both have come together producing a new art.

Street Painter

I met an old street painter from England on the way back from the museum. He was just finishing up by packing everything carefully away. He had little wood boxes for wet canvas sheets. Everything packed up as a backpack. I complemented him on his work and show him a few of my images. He seemed to be Robert Henri. I continue to force myself on him by telling him of a novel new approach to art.  

“The Bathers” by Bouguereau 1825-1905 1884  

Gray is the key to color. The only black is the pupil. Very little definition of form is used. The whole face is painted in three values on a scale of five. The hair where it meets the sky is sky painted slightly brown giving the quality of loose strains of hair but not rendering them. The lips and eye red is gray blood red. The eye celelra is a middle value warm gray.  

Notes on "Art Chicago 2001" 

PPOW Gallery B214  

cardboard line drawings Brett Cook Disney  

Locks Gallery Philadelphia A116 B1154  

Jennifer Bartlett colorful dots on squares  

Maxwell Davidson Gallery B120 New York  

sculpture George Rickey stilettos in the sky   floating platforms , Tim Prentice modified linear mobile  

Peter Miller Gallery Chicago  

Jason Salvadon video color squares with street sounds  

Carl Solway C201 D202  

Alan Rath  

Nam June Paik  

Worthington Art Chicago A126  

Michael Triegel Realistic Bottechelli style  

The Chicago Art Fair was a lesson in art that has passed the first hurtle. As before I mention that the artist does what he does and the dealer does what he does. But where the artist creates the dealer has to fine and believe in the artists. The Chicago Art 2001 shows art that has passed that first hurtle. The art was modern and believable. I tried to fine galleries that would accept my work. I had to search for three dealers since I produce three types of art. I was only able to find five or six galleries. The chances of being accepted by them are slim to nil but I have to present to them. The funny thing was that the only robot art dealer was Cincinnati's, my home town, Carl Solway.

"Chicago Art" is a great way to see a organized presentation of worldwide stable of modern art. You could not travel and see what you see here. This show is a must for any artist. At $12 it is a affordable way to travel the world. The show is a lot safer than any modern museum. The one great thing is there was no schlock. None of the art was kitsch. I imagine this is in a large part to the promoter Thomas Blackman. The whole show was a little strange in the big scheme of things. If you looked down from a space ship of some alien you would see that all the art was made for humans. Each piece was just to our scale. If you were a bear nothing would make sense. A fifty foot woman could use none of this art. Maybe draping a cliff with a tarp had something more to it. I will have to prefect my genetic alteration to the form of a leaf so I can have thousands of individual pieces of art that still look good from above.  

But what did I think of the show as art? Was there anything I would buy? I was comfortable with many of the works. I would appreciated working any of the dealers. sometimes they are called crooks and criminals. Maybe artists are con men. But this is mainstream modern art. I would like to have any of the stone sculpture from Japan. They were large round upright stones of granite with holes in them stacked with small horizontal pieces of limestone. There was some very interesting cartoons on aged paper which made me think of my other special modern artist Charles Man ray. I like the concept but the aged process is dis-likable. I treat them like comic book art. Fun to read but would not hang it on my wall. I would like to find or make a video loop so I could play it on the TV all the time for background. I do not want to be un American and not have the TV constantly going on in the background while talking on the telephone long distance or entertaining long distant friends at home. This leaves very little if no art for me to buy. On the leave I guess I would buy like to take home the worn out cartoon children coloring books except these children all had exposed genitals. That just about says it all. The artist’s story and the artist himself is probably as freaky as a nightmare but right at home with all the stripped down, dressed up dealers.  

The art world is a lot like the NFL 

But what to do with all the artists left out of the loop?  

My Art Making Machines

December 6th, 2000  

I started working on art making robots that thought and did things via a small computer but found that people especially artists and curators felt intimidated with them and actually scared of them. So I put them on the back burner for awhile. This made me move into making mechanical machines that made art. I created a exercising machine that makes art. I guess you have heard about placing a rock under a water fall and come back and find that it had been turned into a round marble. The Art Making Exercising Machine works the same way. Pedaling the water pump makes the rock turn in a depression in another rock. Another  project is a lighter than air exercising machine where you pedal a bicycle with balloons attached and occasionally go airborne and maneuver with an propeller and elevator and stabilizer. The last of the big art machines is a old time push cart of art.  

June 9th 2000  

The few Make the Man

Painting like me is a challenge. I have many admirers. These admirers make me what I am. They define me. I only work for my admirers, they are defined as not really with it in the modern art scene but do not think that they are kitsch buyers. It leaves me with a solid base but you cannot go to them they must come to you. "The few make the man." 

My Return To Classical Manner

May 2nd, 2000  

I no longer paint in my heavy strokes & thick color impressionist manner of 1987. I am returning back to my roots as a smooth surface, thin paint. I want to express the freedom of color and style that marked the height of my impressionist period while adding another level of interest with the transparent colors and detailed brush strokes. I am still working towards that goal.  

On The 1998 Art Trends 

I culled these ideas from Cincinnati's Contemporary Art Museum’s Annual Report.

Art is: a powerful, engaging nostalgic representation drawn from diverse sources.

Art is an innovated response to the plight of the hungry using clothing, the figure, performance and social issues symbolizing manners of dress or presentation.

Art is small, unimportant acts that take on odd significance in their presentation.

Art is using self exploration with determined playfulness and embodies certain emotive properties as in rich material symbolic connotations and innocent stereotypes in art that assume the position and appearance of furniture and other objects using a rationalistic approach and purist legacy.

Art is universal emotions captured in a visual and audio montage. 

Art = Nature 

Art is man made Nature. A fresh bouquet of flowers stimulates like a painting of the same bouquet. The same bouquet after decaying can be painted and will evoke a decaying feeling. Art is Nature highly developed by man. Art has its counterpart in Nature. By taking the reverse course, you could take Nature and develop it into art.  

On Dealers, Curators, Teachers and Buyers 

Dealers, curators and buyers want the best quality work. This means that not only do they want good painting but also the materials used to be good. They seem to get more excited when the materials used are exceptional. The frame is also to be perfect for the painting. I never understood until later in life the attention paid to the frame by the buyer and connoisseur. A good frame will substantially increase the perceived value of the work. The artist should attempt to placate the dealer and buyer but not cow tow to them.