Thomas Paquette - Sketchy Bio

	A Sketchy Biography
1958	Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, eighth of eleven children.
1959-1977	Growing up, Thomas apparently is never told to put away his paints and make an adult choice for a career. In fact the paints are still out, and he has no idea what he will do if he ever grows up. This is perhaps the greatest advantage of being one of eleven children: parents learn early to give up any illusions of control. However, his preoccupation does not go unnoticed. At the age of twelve he is singularly encouraged in his future life's work by one of the most venerable of art patrons in the western world - the Catholic church. Okay, school, more accurately. A nun, his sixth grade teacher, asks him to make a mural, the payment being freedom from all her classes until it is done. Arguably his most richly rewarding commission to date, it coincidentally takes MANY of her classes to complete. During adolescence, he devotes crucial years to sleep deprivation as a morning paperboy, essential training for an obsessed artist. Spends rest of youth finding himself in various sorts of extracurricular trouble and loitering in the art classroom. In one small case, Thomas' history teacher had "busts" him for drawing during class when he should have been taking notes on the efficacy of strikes in Labor Movements. The teacher summons the his parents to a special meeting. The horrified parents are shown a small pile of confiscated caricatures of U.S. presidents, history teachers, and other recognizably nefarious characters drawn by the boy. Ready to deploy a suitable punishment on the errant boy - say, several years of detention - his parents instead were asked, "These drawings are really good, don't you think?" followed by strong recommendation that the boy pursue a career in political cartooning, much to the parents' dismay. Thomas' incipient political cartooning ambitions are put on hold when a year later the high school newspaper pulls one of his cartoons for its content (censorship has no beginning or end), despite his role as the paper's editor-in-chief. Vindication comes a few weeks after that when the University of Minnesota gives him a journalism award for the very same cartoon. Then it occurs to him, "Irony must be the underlying principle of the Universe. Why not, then, study art?"make a career of doing fun stuff like art. Years from now, I will look back from behind the Burger King counter, and at least feel smart."
1977-1985	His intensive art education is brought to a screeching halt when Thomas is gripped by the idea that being an adult means having adventures that are much bigger and bolder than those of childhood, and is drawn to the open road for a few years of vagabonding. He works as a welder and as a naturalist between travels. Crisscrossing the country via the highway and "the rails", his freight-train hopping and hitchhiking bring him as far as the Yukon Territory and Alaska. The stories from those trips could fill a book, which is precisely why they will not be told here. We will just jump forward.... Returns to Minnesota eventually to go back to college. Winds up going to five of them. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Red Wing Technical Institute, Northland College, and finally (for undergraduate work) ends up at Bemidji State University on the edge of Minnesota's great northern wilds, where, despite his best efforts just to spend time in the studio, he earns a BFA degree in Painting, and graduates Summa Cum Laude.
1985-1988	Is awarded a Graduate Fellowship from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, and finds the experience invaluable: The three-year Master's program at SIUE affords a full 50% more respite from mundane realities than most graduate painting programs. Despite the cut-throat competition everyone pictures of the torture chamber called "graduate school", he enjoys the camaraderie of many dedicated faculty and graduate students. For most of each day, he is surrounded by others who also constantly think of art. Not always good or happy thoughts, mind you; but worthy thoughts, nonetheless. In undergraduate as well as graduate school, he experiments with classic surrealist painting, performance and conceptual art, finally returning in his sixth year of serious art study to his first passion - painting the landscape, which begins with some late-night scenes. So when he is finally able to snatch the pebble from the Master's hand, (this is what art students get instead of a diploma at graduation) Thomas finds he is let loose to wander the wide world with a terminal degree in Painting. Some people suggest there should be a law preventing this, or at least have a waiting period of several years.
1988	Establishes a studio in the Warehouse District of Minneapolis. Gets continually distracted when when his dealer - directly across the street on the same floor of another warehouse building - brings her clients to the gallery windows to show them -- across the empty void over busy First Avenue -- "what the artist is working on right now". Seeking escape, he applies for a residency in Florida. Hangs big curtains in the studio windows in the meantime.
1989-1991	Is awarded the Florida residency: a three-year Fellowship - Residency from the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts in Miami. Lives in Miami Beach for three winters, and travels to paint in California and at other residencies (Vermont Studio Center and Grand Marais Art Center) in the other seasons. Does not hop freight trains to accomplish these long journeys this time. But he does live and travel instead in his twenty-year-old, hardly modified (seats removed) Ford Econoline window van, if that helps romanticize the story in a tepid sort of way. And the van truly was unsafe at any speed, if that adds a sense of urgency and adult hi-jinx to the mix.
1990-1991	While on the NFAA residency, he and the other Fellowship recipients are given two annual shows at the Bass Museum of Art. Receives very good critical notice in the Miami Herald, and very bad critical notice from the police (in the form of a parking ticket of unprecedented sum) while unloading paintings from his van in front of the Museum. "Everyone's a critic."
1991-2001 overview	Moves to Maine and establishes a studio in Portland where parking tickets are distributed with wild abandon. A coindidence? Hmm.... Probably not. Actively shows around the U.S., including one-artist exhibitions in New York City at Fischbach Gallery; in Washington, DC, at Mahler Gallery; in Chicago at Lydon Fine Art; in Minneapolis at Flanders Contemporary Art; and in various venues in Maine (too many to list here - please see exhibitions for more). Partakes of several artist-residencies: Millay Art Colony, Acadia National Park, Yosemite National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park. Travels often to paint and see art in the U.S. and Europe (places locally known as "France", "Britain", "Greece," "Italy" and so forth).
1996	Is awarded a second major commission from the State of Minnesota : a thirty-two foot oil-on-canvas painting for Central Lakes College. (In 1990, an 11-foot painting was commissioned for the Centennial State Office in St. Paul.) Makes him miss the homeland even more.
1998	Is awarded a major commission from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis -- four large canvases which total about the same square footage as the Central Lakes College painting. The canvases hang in the main conference room, and the artist secretly hopes that any seriously botched monetary policies formulated in that room are the direct result of people were paying too much attention to the paintings instead of the Chairman's pronouncements.
1999	Spends a month as a Guest Artist of the USM/Aegean Arts and Cultural Exchange, painting and traveling around Greece, and based on the island of Mytilini (Lesvos). Is inspired by well, just about everything about the island.
2000	Is granted a stay at the American Academy in Rome, where he paints gouaches around Rome, predominantly around Pamphili Gardens. Holds a small exhibition of the work produced, in his studio at the AAR.
2001	One-artist exhibition at Georgia Museum of Art, showcasing over 70 Paquette paintings. Is not allowed to take home the enormous banner with his name on it hanging outside the Museum, despite presenting sound arguments such as that it would improve his ability to find his own house at night. Museum Director tactfully resists Thomas' grave error in judgment.
2001-2003	Moves to the picturesque town of Warren in northwestern Pennsylvania, where he maintains a studio and lives with his wife Ellen [who is versed in too many visual, performing, and musical arts to keep track of ] and their cat [whose main talent lies in luring larger animals like humans into ill-advised complacency] near the Allegheny River. Paints.
2004	Continues painting full-time as he has been since graduate school, working on commissions and exhibitions and stuff. Erects new studio. Is invited for a 6-week residency at the McNamara Foundation in Maine in spring. Mid-year, he is compelled to choose between a ship and a ship of state. Scheduled for the same day, he is invited to board the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary 2 (where some of his paintings hang in their posh on-board collection) and also invited to the White House, per invitation of First Lady, to help celebrate forty years of State Department's Art in Embassies program (to whose collections he has lent artwork for over a decade). Decides to go to White House since he doesn't trust his long-distance open-ocean swimming skills and is a still just a little unconvinced by the physics which allows 150,000 tons of steel to float. Little did he suspect that politics offers the same problems. After a day at the White House, full of fresh insights, he seriously reconsiders his history teacher's advice to make a career of political cartooning. Instead, he disappoints his teacher once again and opens a one-man exhibition of landscapes at the Erie Art Museum a few months later.
Present	Continues to stay up too late, and awakens far too early in the morning, despite having quit his morning paper route decades ago.
Postscript	If you think too many details were left out, for example your name, this is because I wanted to avoid mentioning all the trouble you might have caused. Think of the legal liabilities. I'm just trying to be considerate here. And this is where I should apologize for having some fun. I guess I should have told you at the beginning that there IS a serious, "dry" biography called the resume you could choose instead. Well, too late now. So much for foresight.