In 2012, Tom Smith began oil painting after many years of dreaming to be an artist.
Originally from Toledo Ohio, Tom Smith has lived in the Milwaukee area since 1981.
His art training consisted of lessons at the Toledo Museum of Art in 3rd through 5th Grades and then in High School. After one class in college in 1977, he essentially stopped painting.
In 2012, Tom began oil painting again. He has since participated in many plein air events and art shows in Wisconsin, won many awards, taught painting classes and done demonstrations.
A busy studio artist as well as a seasoned plein air painter, Tom has a studio in Wauwatosa, WI.
An advocate of art as therapy for mental illness, in 2020, Tom was invited by the League of Milwaukee Artists and the Cedarburg Art Museum to speak on “The Transformational Power of Creating Art”, sharing how his painting has brought light to a dark area of his adult life, fulfilling childhood dreams and driving away depression.
He is a member of: The League of Milwaukee Artists, The Wauwatosa Artists Workshop, Fine Art Montage, The Rogues Artist Group, Wisconsin Plein Air Painters Association, The American Impressionist Society, NOAPS, and Wisconsin Visual Artists.
In addition to his art career, Tom is also a professional cellist playing in the Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra and Festival City Symphony as well as many other orchestras around Wisconsin.
He is a member of many art organizations, including:
The League of Milwaukee Artists
The Wauwatosa Artists Workshop
Fine Art Montage
The Rogues Artist Group
WIPAPA (Wisconsin Plein Air Painters Association)
The American Impressionist Society
National Oil and Acrylic Painters’ Association
Awards have included:
2024 Purchase Award, Shorewood Fresh 40 invitational art show
2023 Award of Merit, Wauwatosa Artists Workshop group show
2023 Outstanding Achievement Award, Whitefish Bay, WI, Art Fest
2023 4th Place Jefferson, WI Plein Air Competition
2023 2nd place Nocturne category, Paint Cedarburg Competition
2023 2nd Place, Rogues Artists show “The Zodiac”
2022 Best Nocturne, Waukesha, WI Plein Air Competition
2022 Award of Excellence Whitefish Bay Art Fest
2022 Best Nocturne, Cedarburg Plein Air Competition
2022 Honorable Mention, Nocturne, “First Brush of Spring”, New Harmony, IN
2021 Wauwatosa Artists Workshop Blue Ribbon Award of Excellence
2021 Waukesha Plein Air Competition 3rd Place Award
2021 Grohmann Museum LMA show artWorks “Grohmann Award”
2021 Alive in the Arts, Plymouth, WI Best in Show
2020 Plymouth Plein Air Competition “Sunshine Award”
2020 Waukesha Plein Air Competition 2nd Place Award
2020 Rogues Artists Group Exhibition “Art in so Many Words” Best in Show
2020 Wauwatosa Artist Workshop (WAW) Winter Show Blue Ribbon Award of Excellence
2019 Waukesha (WI) Plein Air Competition 3rd Place Award
Bauhaus Prairie Art Gallery Flora & Fauna 2019 online show Honorable Mention
Fusion.art 2nd Season Quarterly Art Exhibition 4th Place Award
2018 New Berlin (WI) Plein Air Honorable Mention
2018 Jerry Goldstein Foundation Artist Merit and Achievement Award
2018 Arbor Place (Menomonie, WI) Plein Air Competition 2nd Place Award
2017 Plymouth, WI "Paint the Towns Plein Air" Honorable Mention
2017 LMA (League of Milwaukee Artists) Fall Show Honorable Mention
2017 Cedarburg Plein Air Competition 2nd Place Award
2017 WAW Winter Show Award of Merit
2017 LMA Winter Show Honorable Mention
2015 WAW Fall Show Honorable Mention
Artist’s Statement
In my childhood, there were dreams. I would paint. I would make beauty. Always present though: a shadow. Even my name was hateful to me.
Then, childhood passed. There would be no beauty. There would be other things, though. Wonderful things: love, children, a career. Yet hiding, in that shadow would be the art, the beauty.
There was a crash. I was unmoving. I was lost in the darkness. Until slowly, emergent, it came finally: the art.
You see, I have suffered from severe anxiety and depression for much of my adult life. The shadow: blocking out the beauty. Then the finding: Asperger’s. Mild but present-and the knowing brought light.
It was after I was unable to continue my career that I began to paint. Therapy, one could say. I say: a renewal of my childhood dreams. And so I began to know that I love standing on the Earth and knowing that I am a part of its wonder. Yet I also know that time is fleeting.
One of my favorite quotes is by writer James Agee: “…and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening, among the sounds of the night.”
Life was for a time, for me, full of sorrow. A sorrow I wanted to end. Painting brought me out of this darkness. When I was in the hospital, the one book I brought along was about oil painting. So when I came home, I began to paint.
I hadn't painted much since I was a young, but now I began to see it as a way to a new life. I wanted to be an artist, and so I painted.
I found other artists, I joined art groups. I painted.
Being a painter has brought me into the light in so many ways. Sometimes being in it can be hard for me. I still struggle, I don’t know how or what to say. But painting has saved my life. I can look and say: here, that’s me. My name is Tom Smith, and I am an artist.