Tom Scheir
"Nothing is more abstract than reality"
- Giorgio Morandi
ABOUT ME
I was raised in Connecticut, graduated from Yale University and moved to California in 1980. For more than 40 years I've made my home on the Westside of Los Angeles, in the Venice and Mar Vista areas. I'm an artist- a painter - but like many artists I pursued other paths to earn a living. I found my creativity to be useful in problem solving and creating systems and I held CFO and COO positions doing fundraising for non profits. Since 2015 I've been studying shodo, Japanese calligraphy. I enjoy the practice, it's difficult but the incremental improvements are satisfying when they come. In addition to painting and shodo I spend one evening a week with a group of fellow artists doing figure drawing.
The Shapness of Things
I like what I refer to as the shapeness of things. And the question I’m most often asked is “what is that shape? Is it (fill in the blank)”.
The shapes in my paintings aren’t meant to represent any one thing. I start in the real world with something in particular: the back of a chair, the shape of an altarpiece, a chipped bowl, a pattern on a woven blanket, the shadow of a yucca plant. While starting out as something specific, for the most part my shapes become something that can evoke multiple readings and can connect differently according to each viewers visual experiences. But sometimes they remain a tea pot, or a fork that bump up against other less specific shapes.
This forms a collection of shapes in my imagination – and I select shapes in the way one might select a color from a box of crayons.
Hello
My name is Alexa Young