|
|
Ad Code: 3
|
An example of work by Tom Theodore Craig
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
|
|
|
This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Born in Upland, California, Tom Craig became a landscape, portrait and
figure painter whose early career was in illustration but whose later
focus was fine-art painting. He became a major figure in The
California Style of watercolor painting.
As a young student, Craig studied botany at the University of
California at Berkeley, and living in Los Angeles, continued botanical
studies at Pomona College. With a persistent interest in art, he
studied briefly at Chouinard Art Institute with Stanton
Macdonald-Wright, Millard Sheets and Barse Miller.
In 1928, when he was 21, he got tuberculosis, and for his health, moved
for several years to Palm Springs, California for the dry desert
climate. During this period, he became a serious fine-art
painter, and returning to Los Angeles, studied with Frank Tolles
Chamberlain and Clarence Hinkle.
Watercolor became his favorite medium, and many of his paintings were
worked in a very wet style, had soft colors, and "often depicted farm
or rural scenes on misty, foggy, or rainy days." (McClelland, 48)
Because Northern California provided the climate conducive to this type
of painting, he spent much time there, having recovered enough from the
tuberculosis to be in that type of climate.
In the 1930s, he
taught at Occidental College and at the University of Southern
California, and in 1941, he traveled and painted throughout the
Southwest on a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was a World War II
artist correspondent in Italy for Life magazine, and after that
time, painted only occasionally as his main interest became the raising
of hybrid flowers, specializing in irises. In 1950, he settled in
Escondido.
Sources:
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940
Gordon T. McClelland & Jay T. Last, The California Style, p. 48
|
| ** If you discover credit omissions or have additional information to add, please let us know at registrar@AskART.com. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tom Craig is also mentioned in these AskART essays:
The California Art Club
|
|
|