Biography for Thomas Vieth

 

Born: Davenport, Iowa, 1957.  BA, cum laude from Dartmouth College, graduating with Highest Distinction Honors in major, 1980. BFA from Boston University, 1987.

 

Tom’s paintings are in collections throughout the US, in France and in England.  Over a professional career that spans three decades, Tom’s art has been represented by many galleries and agents across the US.  For the past twenty years, his primary means of exhibiting and selling his work has been through private shows. 

 

Tom’s  vision in painting is to connect with people through shared experiences.  The way he uses light and color evokes the emotional core of the places and things he paints.  This allows the viewer to be reminded of a similar place he or she has seen or experienced. The details of the places Tom paints are left out so that the place, or objects, or time of day can become more universal. This is the key to making connections through shared experiences.

 

Tom describes the differences between working in watercolor and oil paints:

            “All of my watercolors are done on location—right in the middle of the village or market, out in a field, or looking at a vase of flowers. Making watercolors is like playing a very challenging tennis match.  I am ready for the challenge because of all the work accomplished through hundreds of previous watercolors. A tennis player responds more than thinks in the heat of the match. Likewise, when I am making the watercolor, thinking gets in the way of the constant challenge involved in responding to what is in front of me and with the changes each brush stroke makes in the watercolor.

            Oil painting is like a very long chess game. I work on the painting until I am stuck. Then I set it aside, think about it, work on other paintings, and think about it some more. When I return to the first painting, I can always discover what I should do next. I have to follow where the painting leads me. I don’t feel like I make oil paintings so much as I find them.”

 

There are many influences of other artists in Tom’s work. The most obvious influences are the French painters Cezanne, Matisse, and Dufy. Not so obvious are the subtle influences of the American painters Milton Avery, Marsden Hartley and Maurice Prendergast. All of these painters are colorists and present images that transcend the time and place of the scenes they depict.

 

Tom’s largest corporate project involved creating forty watercolors and seventeen oil paintings for the lobby spaces in the prestigious Ballantyne Resort Hotel in Charlotte, North Carolina.

 

Tom’s wife, Susan, manages his business affairs, makes and gilds the picture frames, manages his web site, and supports his work in a thousand other ways when she isn’t skipping out to the garden (six months of the year) or skiing (during the snowy Vermont winters.)

 

3838 South Road    Williston, Vermont  05495     (802) 878-7314   www.thomasvieth.com