Reception: August 4, 5:30-7:30
Contact: Diane Kell, 505.988.8997

LewAllen Contemporary
129 West Palace Avenue
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501

Santa Fe, NM – Suppose you are the Grand Designer, and you think it is time to create an Artist totally unlike any that has gone before. Would you find it tempting, an amusing idea perhaps, to splice together the artistic DNA of Mel Ramos, Ingres and Magritte? What do you get when you cross a Pop Artist known for portraits of pinup girls posing good-humoredly with wildlife, a nineteenth-century Neo-Classicist known for sumptuous portraits of bourgeois society, and a Surrealist known for his witty juxtaposition of everyday objects?

The result is the sophisticated whimsy and technical mastery of Tom Palmore. His witty and unusual portraits of wildlife will be featured in a solo exhibition at LewAllen Contemporary in Santa Fe from August 4 to 28, 2006. Working with oil and acrylic on either canvas or board, he is well known for painting ultra-real images of animals in unusual, imaginative settings; and he cites Ramos, Ingres and Magritte as three painters who have influenced his work. While in his technique he remains predominantly representational, conceptually his works depict a surreal, phantasmagoric image of natural life. As described by one critic, Palmore realistically renders “every sort of creature, from parrots to bears to rams, in circumstances that are not impossible, perhaps, but certainly unlikely. He likes to think that if these animals could commission their own portraits, these would be their chosen settings” (Dottie Indyke, Southwest Art, June 2003).

Indeed, one of the more interesting facets of Palmore’s work is the way in which he seems to approach each painting as though it were commissioned by the subject itself. This inversion of role between artist and subject is perhaps one of the predominant ways the artist achieves the remarkable illusory quality in his work. Palmore has said, “The bulk of my work has one thing in common, a juxtaposition of realism with a sense of the unexpected, a sense of wit.”

This unique and often comical juxtaposition of technical literalism and fantastical contexts occasions an opportunity for the viewer to explore and reassess personal and traditional modes of thinking regarding nature. Palmore seems particularly interested in challenging our common human instinct toward personification.

Palmore’s first solo show of his paintings was in Philadelphia in 1971. The title for the show was Gorillas, Midgets and a Couple of Dogs. “I went from being a student and bartender to selling out the show and becoming a fulltime artist,” he says. Enjoying not only the success but also the opportunity to keep himself laughing, he has been painting animals ever since.

For his shows in Santa Fe, he tries always to include a few more Western-oriented themes. “For instance,” he told us, “I’m working now on a painting of a cat sitting on a silver-studded, tooled-leather saddle. There’ll also be jackrabbits, longhorn bulls, a bobcat, a redtailed hawk. And a kangaroo.” From his laughter it was clear he enjoyed the bada-boom of his last revelation, the oddity of a kangaroo in the midst of these other animals. “Yes,” he added, “I enjoy things that I think are witty. It makes me a little bit different. It sets my work apart.”

Born in Oklahoma in 1945, Palmore’s education and art training occurred at several institutions of higher learning, concluding with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia in 1969. His work appears in numerous prominent public collections, including the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; the Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; the Denver Museum of Art; the New Orleans Museum of Art; the Saint Louis Museum of Art; the Brooklyn Museum; the Indianapolis Museum of Art; the Albuquerque Museum of Art; and the National Museum of Wildlife Art, Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

LewAllen Contemporary is open 9:30-5:30 Monday through Thursday, 9:30-6:30 Friday and Saturday, and 11:00-5:00 Sunday. Tom Palmore’s Portraits of the Animal World will run from Friday, August 4, through Monday, August 28. For further information please contact Diane Kell at (505) 988-8997 or [email protected].