Art Sync: Depths and Enclosures

TP: Yes, it is my imprint. I have only published books for my own museum exhibitions, mostly catalogues. It’s a great way to have a token of the event, and a reminder of the works gathered for the shows.

It is never easy to contact galleries for exhibitions. Besides developing a thick skin, the only true advice is to always pour the best of everything into your work, and then hope that when you present it, your work resonates with gallerists and curators.

EJ: There is a wealth of exhibition news on your site. You have two exhibits coming up in 2026 at Erie Art Museum (Erie, PA) and Groveland Gallery (Minneapolis, MN). Are you planning a different focus and paintings for each? Are you already working with each curator's vision?

TP: Totally different work. Groveland’s June show will be a new collection of oil paintings. The Erie Art Museum’s exhibition runs from January 2026 into spring of 2027. So, not only can there be no overlapping works, but this exhibition is devoted to my gouaches alone, works I rarely put out for sale. They span the last thirty-five years.

TP: The new works for Gross McCleaf are not just old-growth forest interiors, though it’s true I have dedicated the last couple years to that focus. The depths or enclosures of forests, as you put it, are the subject of the largest works, which have consumed most of my production time over the last two years, but there are also some skyscapes to play against those.

EJ: Silvery Morning Woods focuses on compressed depth of misty woods at daybreak, as Broken Ash on Property Line singles out one broken tree––both are poetic ideas. Is narrative entering the work?

TP: I think of how my subjects and I are in dialogue, and why they intrigue me. For instance, I am always tuning in to geology and environmental differences in places, and to the interconnectivity of nature––or, as in Broken Ash, to the reason why this tree snapped––and I am sure those backstories find their way into my paintings. Layers of paint might stand for geological strata/time. I suppose narratives and poetry inform my decision to paint, but rather than aiming for a story in my paintings, I simply wish to show these things, these phenomena that I am drawn to. The impetus is always in the visual moment of perception. But I can tell you about that hanging tree.

TP: Over the last several years, ash trees in our area have been plagued by the invasive emerald ash borer beetle to the brink of extinction. It's a sad and kind of horrifying experience. This particular tree was near our property line and framed a view to the distance for us. Then, because it was riddled by beetles, it was killed, and for a year it stood upright, leafless. When ashes are killed like this, they sometimes snap in a strangely clean way––at several feet off the ground. They look cleanly "cut," like a giant's scythe sheared straight through them. Our tree snapped like this but was prevented from falling to the ground by a neighboring oak tree, which held it in this precarious position for two full years. I checked it daily, fascinated by how these few inches of contacting wood could hold these many hundreds of pounds of force in check. One day I heard a crash and knew it had finally fallen to the ground. 

EJ: Gouaches Gold Arc of Trees, Backlit Clouds, and Up make a nice triptych of light coming from behind a subject and creating prismatic color. Were these painted on-site or in the studio from your own photos? How does capturing super bright, color-enhanced natural daylight with the structure of meshed pattern or design differ from your approach to painting the dark forest floor?

TP: Every painting is an opportunity to find new ways to approach the subject. So, every painting, every subject is the chance to build on––or deliberately disregard––how I approached them in the past. There really is no difference painting sunlit sky or forest floor: it is oil on canvas or gouache on paper, manipulated into something that is, I hope, if not “right” it’s at least interesting to look at.

I back up any plein air gouache painting I do with a photograph of the scene. Once I am back in the studio, I invariably apply layers of paint to anything done in the field, sometimes over the course of years, and the painting might drift unappealingly far from the original impetus. If I ever need to temper my wanderings or be reminded of my muse in the field, I always have a fair “sketch” of the place handy.

EJ: Here's what you said about objectivity in the last interview: "Being effective requires borrowing someone else’s eyes, and pretending you are seeing the painting for the first time: ‘What do I see? What seems wrong? What is interesting, and what isn't? Who the heck made this mess of a painting?' I make a variety of studies sometimes to get to a new perspective. I take breaks facing away from the canvas until, as much as possible, I forget what I did and surprise myself in approaching the canvas. It all boils down to overcoming myopia."

Is it possible that, with the passage of years, different levels of rendered physical depth in your pictures have deepened your objectivity towards picture making? I am wondering if studying and painting physical space has made your reasoning more objective?

Thomas Paquette: Haven

May 3 - 31

BFA Painting, Bemidji State University, 1985 summa cum laude
MFA Painting, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, 1988 full graduate fellowship

Thomas Paquette (Warren, PA) has been a full-time painter since 1988. Months after his thesis exhibition, Paquette was awarded a three-year residency-fellowship in Miami Beach from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts. Other notable artist-residencies include American Academy in Rome, Aegean Arts and Cultural Exchange, Millay Colony, Blue Mountain Center, and Acadia, Yosemite, and Rocky Mountain national parks.

Almost 70 solo exhibitions of his works were mounted at museums and prominent galleries in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Washington, and elsewhere. His traveling solo exhibition "America's River Re-Explored" showed at Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Watermark Art Center, and Dubuque Museum of Art. "On Nature's Terms," a 70-painting solo exhibition, traveled to art museums in California, New York, and Indiana (California Nature Art Museum, Quick Center for the Arts, Evansville Museum of Art). Other solo museum exhibitions were at Erie Art Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, The Rockwell Museum, and Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

Several dozen of his paintings were selected for exhibitions at 22 U.S. embassies on five continents. Some of those embassies include Athens, Brussels, Moscow, Ottawa, Rome, Santiago, St. Petersburg, Taipei, and Vienna. His works are in numerous private, corporate, museum and state collections. He has lectured at museums and universities in the U.S., Greece, Wales, and England, and his bibliography is lengthy.