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“A Native American in headdress is recognized world-wide as even a greater Western icon than the tepee,” relates Tom Gilleon on Turning Bear. “And just as I do with my tepee paintings, I’m focusing on color, shape and form to tell my story, to evoke that emotion.”
The graphic nature of Turning Bear gives this painting the feel of a serigraph, a cross between the pop-art that Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein popularized in the 60s.Yet, for all the emphasis Gilleon puts on deconstructing the figure into its most basic shapes and colors, he makes sure that the eyes themselves are sharp and focused. The further out in the image you travel from the eyes, the less detail you’ll find. “Part of what I’d like people to walk away with is the understanding that, at the heart of it, the icon evolved from and represents a real people.”
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“Looking back, I was probably most influenced by the old era art directors and
illustrators who had the amazing ability to quickly and simply tell a story or
convey a feeling with their artwork. I believe that this simplicity and strength
is the key to fine art. Light, color, value, composition and line are paramount
in importance.” – R. Tom Gilleon
R. Tom Gilleon’s art is hard to pigeonhole. His interpretations of the American
West are genuine and unique. His representations of native teepees are
archetypal and primitive in their basic forms yet they are remarkably
contemporary in composition with a sprinkling of personal symbols and humor.
Gilleon’s work is coveted by collectors, increasingly finding homes in prominent
museums and auctions such as the Coeur d’Alene.
Gilleon was born in 1942 and raised in Florida by his grandparents in the tiny
outpost of Starke, near Jacksonville and the storied banks of the Suwannee
River. His grandfather had immigrated to the United States from Scotland and
became a renowned cabinetmaker. His grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee.
Gilleon earned a scholarship to play baseball at the University of Florida where
he took courses in architecture. He served in the Navy in the early 1960s and
then worked as an illustrator for NASA’s Apollo space program. Eventually, he
went solo as a freelance illustrator based in Orlando and was hired by The Walt
Disney Corporation to deliver conceptual sketches and designs for its Disney
World theme park. Later, he moved to California to work at Disney’s Imagineering
studio which designed Epcot Center and then Gilleon assisted in the planning of
Disneyland Tokyo, Disneyland Hong Kong and Disneyland Paris.
The American West left a mesmerizing impact on him as an artist. Gilleon and his
wife first built a home along the Dearborn River in Montana, and later purchased
a ranch near Great Falls not far from the legendary Old North Trail where native
peoples traveled millennia ago from the Arctic to the desert Southwest. Here
Gilleon found clusters of teepee rings from encampments which inspire him to
contemplate how the camps might have looked centuries ago.
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