Portraits of Houses and Towns by Tom Menard
Tom Menard has been painting since the late 1960s, and is based in small-town Connecticut. The artist’s surroundings clearly inspire much of his current body of work, with Tom’s detailed, illustrative portraits of houses and towns carrying an undeniable small-town atmosphere.
I’m always impressed by the level of detail and intricacy that Tom packs into each of his works. The artist’s town portraits are dense and demand close examination, inviting the viewer to follow winding paths between tiny buildings and through equally tiny yet texturally detailed foliage.
Very occasionally, Tom’s works are imbued with a darker tone that belies the light, illustrative storybook quality, such as in NYC for Ken, in which the World Trade Center can be seen smoking in the background behind the statue of liberty. This is also one of Tom’s only paintings of a larger metropolis, and it’s interesting to see the contrast here between the moods and mentalities of towns and cities.
