For more than 35 years, Tom Palmore has been painting animals as the subjects of portraits with characteristic wit, sophistication, refined attention to detail, and stunning technical prowess. His ultra-real renderings of animals in oil and acrylic offer a unique and often comical juxtaposition of technical literalism and surreal, imaginative context, challenging conventions of photography and painting, especially as seen in the portrait genre. In his new exhibition, at LewAllen Galleries in the Santa Fe Railyard, Big Cats and Birds, Palmore once again questions the traditions of portraiture and encourages his viewers to further extend their inclination to personify animals.

These exotic felines and birds, painted with great reverence and an inherent sense of mystery, almost appear to have commissioned the portraits themselves. Palmore’s keen eye for human idiosyncrasy, coupled with a genuine reverence for the character of animals, converges in art that glows with personality. Defined by a sense of nobility, dignity, and eloquence, Palmore reminds his audience, through these representations, that these remarkable creatures should be regarded as partners alongside their human counterparts.

Capturing the glossy sheen of a jungle cat’s wet nose or the thousands of tiny, individual down feathers insulating a barn owl, Palmore’s facility with paint and singular attention to detail is brilliantly evidenced in the lifelike details he achieves on canvas. It is not only Palmore’s technical prowess, but also his unique sense of humor, in his unexpected settings, that sets his work apart, and makes the viewer look more closely at the animal and the environment.

Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Palmore’s education in art occurred at several institutions, concluding at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1969. His work appears in numerous corporate collections and in such prominent public collections as the Smithsonian Institution, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, among others.