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Spokane Creators

Tom Quinn

Originally from Great Falls, Montana, I grew up surrounded by art -- mostly nostalgic celebrations of the Old West by the likes of Charles M. Russell and Frederick Remington. I found there was more to art by the time I attended Gonzaga University and spent my junior year in Florence, the home of Michelangelo and Botticelli. There I became enamored of the serene beauty of Renaissance painting.
After receiving a degree in art history, I went on to the Art Institute of Seattle to pursue a career as an illustrator. At the time -- the mid-eighties -- there was a whole school of illustrators whose work was semi-primitive and had an ironic twist. The style died out by the nineties but I consider it well worth reviving.
Now living in Spokane, I have done several murals in addition to my easel paintings, I’ve illustrated five books and several magazine articles, I draw caricatures at parties and conventions, and I teach drawing and painting at the Spokane Art School and the Corbin Art Center. My work has been exhibited in galleries in Spokane, Seattle, and Portland.
I work mostly in acrylic and oil with hard edges, intense colors, and finicky detail. I like to show what's absurd but not impossible, to take the ordinary out of context, and to turn the familiar into the strange.

Caffè, Oil on Canvas, 36 by 24 in., 2016

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