works by Tom Glover

February 6 - March 29  | Art 'Round Town / Friday, February 6 / 5 - 8pm

"There was something in the air.

When I was a youngster there was something surrounding art—an aura or mystique which got under my skin. It continued at college and when I went to my teacher John Laurent’s house and studio out on the farm in York, Maine, that mystique grew and grew.

It was something about the beauty of his paintings, the colors and the way they were painted. It was also something about how I was seeing for the first time a Marsden Hartley, a Walt Kuhn, a Jules Pascin, a Charles Woodbury, all hanging in the house there on the farm.

So that something in the air turned into something under my skin and I couldn’t shake it. I couldn’t really explain it. And as it happens, I still can’t explain it! It’s like trying to explain the meaning of a flower. I wanted to create work that gave others the same sense of beauty and infusion of rightness and humanness that seeing certain works of art were giving me. The only way to do that was to paint, so that is what I have been doing for over fifty years. Every so often someone likes what I do and a little bit of joy is passed from one person to another. What’s better than that I ask? What’s better than that?"

Tom Glover was the son of a glove maker. Not really, but somewhere back in time there must have been some glove makers.

Glover was born in Keene, NH. He graduated with a B.F.A. degree in painting at the University of NH, Durham and worked closely with Maine painter John Laurent up until Laurent's death in 2005. He studied painting restoration with the conservator Anthony Moore in York, Maine. For several years lectured at the University of Connecticut to science education graduate students on, "The Landscape, Mythology and the Artist". He has also taught painting at the University of New Hampshire, D.C.E., and workshops on the Isles of Shoals, NH/ME. Presently he teaches painting at Sanctuary Arts in Eliot, Maine.

In 1996 he was artist in residence on White Island, Isles of Shoals. In 2000 he was awarded a fellowship to work on Great Spruce Head Island where he used Fairfield Porter's easel and on a second stay the following summer used Eliot Porter's old darkroom as living and painting quarters. He began seeking out the masters during several trips over the past two decades to Italy, England, Ireland, France, Spain and Denmark. He was artist in residence at Rancho Romero, Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, and a visiting artist at Monticello, New Mexico exploring canyons, Apache Forts and possible Anasazi ruins. In 2016 he was artist in residence at the Shoals Marine Lab on Appledore Island, Isle of Shoals. In 2023 he joined Shoals Resident Artist alumni for a three day painting stay on Appledore to create work to benefit the Shoals Marine Lab.