Earthlings Tom Palmore

Earthlings
Susan Hallsten McGarry earned her master’s degree in art history from the University of
Minnesota and served as editor-in-chief of Southwest Art magazine from 1979 to 1997.
She has authored more than twenty monographs and catalogues on American artists
and contributed to many more. Living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she is administrative
director of the national painting group Plein-Air Painters of America and is active in
the local art community, working with galleries and the nonprofit ARTsmart, which
funds art materials and scholarships for Santa Fe’s youth.
It feels like you could touch that cougar’s nose.
Is that a Miró painting in the background?
Earthlings
The Paintings of Tom Palmore
2002, oil/acrylic, 60 x 84. Back flap: Happy Jack, 2002, oil/acrylic, 20 x 24.
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Wow, that’s one bodacious bird!
Such are the observations that float through the galleries during a Tom Palmore exhibition.
Born in Ada and living in Oklahoma, Palmore emerged from the 1970s Photorealist
:
Jacket images: Front: The Big Picture, 1998, oil/acrylic, 36 x 48. Back: Earthling (detail),
I’ll bet the frog chose the insects on that wallpaper.
movement as a maverick. His career includes more than a decade on the East Coast,
where he refined his skills at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and exhibited in New
York’s prominent contemporary galleries. Unlike his cohorts in the “shiny bumper school,”
Palmore used his technical virtuosity to explore his passion for the animal kingdom.
Then as today, his monumental paintings received critical acclaim, and his incongruous
juxtapositions of realistic primates in silk-and-velvet interiors earned him the nickname
The Gorilla Man.
Palmore’s fidelity to an animal’s visage is intended to make it proud. However, the contexts
in which he places them are pure Palmore, infused with his penchant for wit and the
unexpected. His portrait of Oscar, the famed rodeo bull, is set against Palmore-designed
wallpaper of cowboys catapulted into the air. A rooster surveys its Grant Wood countryside,
and a kingly lion is oblivious to the diminutive butterfly, a monarch of another sort, that
flutters nearby. In all cases, Palmore’s paintings loom large not only in scale but also in
breadth of consciousness of the “earthlings with whom we share this planet,” as he says.
The Paintings of
Tom Palmore
Susan Hallsten McGarry
The stories behind the man, his artistic philosophy, and the themes that weave throughout
his remarkable oeuvre combine with 120 stunning paintings to make this a book that art
lovers of all ages will enjoy. As noted by contributor Julie Sasse, “Palmore gives viewers not
only what they have come to expect in his paintings—verisimilitude extraordinaire—but
also entertainment and witty juxtapositions that entice viewers to think beyond the
obvious.”