Tom Besson, born in 1951, is a product of Nineteen-Fifties America, and a Czech immigrant subculture.
He studied at The University of Houston Art College for 3 years before “dropping-out”
and moving to the counter-culture Austin of 1974. He has been a member of alternative
artists’ communities in Austin, Texas including “F’Art’Sake”, Austin’s Vanishing
Point Arts and Alternate Current Gallery. In addition to his work with the artists’
community of Elgin, Texas he is member of the Austin Visual Arts Association.
In the mid-90’s Besson retraced his immigrant ancestors’ journey back to Moravia
where he now maintains a summer studio. He has moved from observer to participant
in the culture, moderating numerous music festivals in Moravia and he is the
only American artist invited to join the Unie Vytvarných Umelcu Olomoucka
(Union of Creative Artists of Olomouc), an artists’ collective in Olomouc, Czech
Republic. His current work has been displayed in museum exhibitions sponsored
by the Czech Ministry of Culture and in contemporary art galleries in Texas
and the Czech Republic.
Since 2000 Besson has been the curator of numerous exhibitions. In addition to a neosymbolist exhibition with Slovakian artist Stanislav Grezdo in 2002 he has facilitated two group shows at Gallery Lombardi in Austin Texas(April,2003 and 2004) and a Neosymbolists from America Exhibition in Olomouc, Czech Republic(March,2005). His involvement with symbolism lead to associations with American, Czech, German, Slovakian and Danish artists with similar interests. In 2006-7 he was curator of an International Exhibition of Neosymbolism. In association with Austin Visual Arts Association, the Texas Commission on the Arts, UVUO in Olomouc, Czech Republic, and Symbol X Artist Collective of Denmark, Besson coordinated the traveling exhibition’s shows in Austin, Texas, Copenhagen, Denmark, and Olomouc, Czech Republic.
Besson has work in the permanent collection of the University of Houston and in private collections in Ireland, Wales, Czech Republic, Canada and the United States.
Artist Statement
Symbolism, Regionalism and the work of Gustav Klimt, Thomas Hart Benton, Charles
Burchfield, and Huntertwasser have influenced my painting style.
My work expresses what it means to live in this rapid-fire nihilistic culture.
I acknowledge my feelings to myself and to the world. Using symbols and bright
colors I express ideas and emotion.
I hold a mirror to the world, exploring personal and universal experiences. Painting the energy that drives life and how our spirits are connected to nature is my objective. In the end I am satisfied to show how my hand has danced across canvas and time. Symbolism or politics no longer matter and all that is left is the song of my life.
Gallerie Jean Moulin -
Gallery 19 -
Valassky Muzeum - Roznov, Czech
Republic - July 2005
Gallerie Jean Moulin -
Gallery M K- Rožnov pod Radhoštem, Czech Republic - July 2003
Galerie Panacea - Valašské Mezirící, Czech Republic - July 2002
na Špalícku v Kavárne M-Klub - Valašské Mezirící, Czech Republic - June 2002
Alternate Current Gallery -
na Špalícku v Divadelní Kavárne - Valašské Mezirící, Czech Republic - June 2000
Galerie Panacea - Valašské Mezirící, Czech Republic - July 2000
The Yoga School - Austin, Texas - April 1998
Manor Road Space -
Vanishing Point Art School -
Austin, Texas - November- December 1986
Selected Group
Exhibitions
Erotica 08
Gallery Lombardi - Austin, Texas - August 2-25, 2008
Juried
Neosymbolizmus
Galerie Fontana - Piestany, Slovakia -
October7 -27, 2008
Besson-Greždo Exhibition
Local Color
Kingfisher Fine Art and Music - Elgin, Texas - June 23-Aug 18, 2007
Juried
May Day
Gallery Lombardi - Austin, Texas - April 24-May1, 2007
Invitational
Unie Vytvarnych Umelcu Olomoucka
Exhibice Clenu
Galerie G - Olomouc,Czech Republic - February 8-February25, 2007
International Exhibition of
Neosymbolism
Galerie G - Olomouc, Czech Republic - January 4-January 29, 2007
Juried
Gallery Lombardi - Austin, Texas
- December-January 2006
Invitational Group Show
Symbol X
Juried
International Exhibition of
Juried
Gallery Lombardi - Austin,
Invitational
Besson/Finfrock
Neosymbolism is Central Texas
Gallery Lombardi - Austin,Texas - April 2004 Neosymbolism is Central Texas
Juried
Wimberley Gallery - Wimberley, Texas - January 2003
Invitational
Rose Minn Gallery - Elgin, Texas
- October 2003
Juried
New Space Gallery - Austin,
Texas - October-November 2003
Juried
Gallery Lombardi - Austin, Texas
- April-May 2003
Invitational
Gallery Lombardi - Austin, Texas
- October-November 2002
Juried
Rose Minn Gallery -
Juried
Julia C. Butridge Gallery -
Austin, Texas - October 2002
Juried
Alternate Current Gallery- Austin,
Texas - March 2002
Juried
Salinas Art Fair - Bastrop,
Texas - March 2001
Juried
Besson/Grezdo
Depot Street Gallery - Elgin, Texas - June 2001
Besson/Grezdo
Depot Street Gallery- Elgin,
Texas - October 2001
Juried
Alternate Current Gallery -
Austin, Texas - December 2001
Juried
Pearls before Swine - Elgin,
Texas - October 2000
Juried
Alvin Junior College - Alvin,
Texas -June 1999
Invitational Two- Man Show
Alternate Current Gallery -
Austin, Texas - October 1997
Invitational Group Show
Visual Arts Association - Austin, Texas - October 1991
Juried
Did I say small? Then—same as today and all the time between. Small, thin, but please don’t say frail because we are all more than our bodies and I hope you throw spirit into the balance, affording me a fighting chance. So why would I choose to be like most around me. To set myself up for failure in arenas where others are better equipped? No, much to the concern of my father I found sewing and baking far more intriguing than any ball could be. In making things, there is a certain element of control.
And then the trip to Mexico. The dysentery that followed. No chance my tack would change after that. I moved from thinness to emaciation. My physical meagerness became part of my self- identity.
And the fever. Ah, the fever that scrambled time and made me know things are not necessarily what you think they are.
To read, to draw, to sew, to bake. All good things. Good things done alone.
And the glory days of the centennial. The centennial of the great war of secession. Lost then, but not so greatly lost as it is today, I found my heroes. Long bearded generals of a lost cause yet to be besmirched upon the altar of political correctness.
And thus started my pursuit of the arts. In my frustrated attempts to draw those bearded heroes. How often I praised those beards, saving me from the disappointment of failed mouths and any attempts at chins or necks.
What I thought insufficient, my teacher thought showed promise. At her suggestion my parents enrolled me in art lessons at the age of eleven. Dear Helen Coffee, what has become of you? Lost to me after spending those seven formative years under your tutelage.
An unfinished education at the University of Houston Art College, a few accolades and away into the failed revolution of the sixties. Even then I didn’t join in the party till a year after they buried the last hippie in San Francisco. I might as well have been a beatnik.
But experiment we should. Timely or nay. This I know because fever taught me—things are not always what they seem, or at worse can be imagined to be something else. So the commune and some time on the road and the wife, so loved that the children came, brining a tarnish to my idealism as the cultural revolution took a back seat to the more proletariat ideals of food, shelter and care of loved ones.
This led to a career in advertising. Taking a low rung of the ladder of prestige I became a sign painter. One of the finest compromises of my life. A brush in my hand and a profession in which eccentrics are expected. Dear Mrs. Coffee did tell my parents so long ago not to fear, I could always be a sign painter.
Never completely giving up the pursuit of my art, it took a back seat to the American Dream—owning a home, raising a family, tempered by the darker side of the, oh so failed cultural revolution.
And another page turned, another goal realized, I turned back to the childhood dream —to paint. The hurrying years had brought me to the mid-1980’s. In need of a rebirth (that a spiritual rebirth could give us again our wasted youth) I put a pencil back into my hand and sought out a creative community. I found that in the salon of Melissa Barrington, wild-eyed muse to many. Together and with others, we started Vanishing Point Art School in east Austin. Our goal—affordable art training in a counter culture atmosphere. Our accomplishments—lasting friendships of like-minded people, a few students, an open life-drawing studio that raised the models’ pay scale and an alternative gallery space. Yet another ode to creation sung together.
And the paintings came as they still do, watercolors reintroduced me to the joy of glowing transparency, oils approached in a manner new to me that mimics that glow and, finally, a second take with acrylics. And as life became fuller I became more full of inspiration.
The life of the city was exchanged for that of life in the country. A quieter, more reflective stage was entered. The small town of Elgin asked me to start an annual art exhibition. An opportunity to showcase my work and that of my friends, taken, has grown into a juried show with seventy pieces a year. It has moved from any available derelict building to be housed in a permanent gallery in downtown Elgin and is in its twelfth year.
As the years accrued
so did the blessings. Mixed as
ever with sorrow. After the death
of my father I brought my mother to visit her motherland of Moravia. To hear
the ancestral song of a land before unknown to me opened a new chapter in my
life. A chapter still unfinished.
The welcoming people call me back and I pack my studio and return again
and again on painting sabbaticals. To
live as a painter in the woods of the Beskedy Mountains, comfortable, alone,
in a cottage at the base of Radhost, I have found the time and the place in
which I can live my childhood dream of play with hairy sticks and colored mud.
Czech translation