Claire Tom
Biography
Claire Hanson Tom 2023
Claire Hanson Tom is a California artist who has exhibited her work since the 1990s and continues developing her creative production. She is a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2013, she illustrated the award-winning children’s book The Bubblegum Princess (Julie Gribble, New York Media Works). She has worked with Magic Realist painter Gregory Gillespie and with the American satirist Jules Feiffer.
The body of her work broadly spans the field of 2-D media-from oil and watercolor painting to large format magic realist drawings, to scientific illustration and graphic narrative formats. Her proficient use of media enables her to explore the nexus between the narrative qualities inherent in materials and the representation of form.
Alongside her artwork, Claire has been an adjunct professor at Columbia College since 2007, teaching all subjects related to 2-D Art. She is also in active collaboration with the Forestry and Natural Resources Department to promote visual tools and artistic methods to facilitate understanding of the natural world. She has developed this connection through her Drawing in Nature FNR 173 and Nature Journaling FNR 174 summer courses at Bakers Station since 2014.
Claire Tom says:
“My painting concerns involve the importance of the dialogue between color upon the physical surface of the paper and the chimerical nature forms which evolve and are created out of my direct experience in real time. In this, I attempt to embody life’s temporal dynamics within the atmospheres, artifacts, and objects we live in and around."