TOM BLACKWELL: The Complete Paintings, 1970–2014

The book cover of Tom Blackwell features a detail of the oil painting titled Sagaponack Sunday: the front half of a shiny red, black, and silver motorcycle emerges from the left edge of the cover.
Artist Tom Blackwell sits in a chair in front of a half-painted canvas wearing an apron and holding a paintbrush. He looks away from the painting and into the camera.
A hyperrealist watercolor painting of a shiny metallic motorcycle in a green-and-red display space. The motorcycle takes up almost all of the painting with its front wheel cropped.
A hyperrealist oil painting of a silver airplane called Escape II is shown. The nose, cockpit, and wings of the airplane appear on the bottom left of the painting.
This hyperrealist oil painting shows a black and blue motorcycle parked on the grass in front of a low hedge on a neighborhood street. A white helmet and a black leather jacket hang from the seat.
In this hyperrealist painting, a gray car drives down a two-lane road with a guard rail and cityscape in the background. A rearview mirror appears at the top of the painting.
A storefront window display with a red awning and four female mannequins is the subject of this hyperrealist painting. The mannequins are wearing mid-length red, yellow, and blue dresses.
In this hyperrealist oil painting, a window display appears beneath an awning that reads “North Beach Leather.” In the window are four mannequins wearing blue outfits, red wigs, and red shoes.
A Bendel's window display is the subject of this hyperrealist oil painting. In the window, five female mannequins wearing ornate dresses stand in the light of a red and orange spotlight.
The subjects of this hyperrealist oil painting are a red and a blue motorcycle parked on a street corner. Behind them is a café with an umbrella outside and a row of palm trees.
A hyperrealist oil painting is a close-up of a shiny silver Pontiac GTO with a triple-carburetor engine.
The book cover of Tom Blackwell features a detail of the oil painting titled Sagaponack Sunday: the front half of a shiny red, black, and silver motorcycle emerges from the left edge of the cover.
Artist Tom Blackwell sits in a chair in front of a half-painted canvas wearing an apron and holding a paintbrush. He looks away from the painting and into the camera.
A hyperrealist watercolor painting of a shiny metallic motorcycle in a green-and-red display space. The motorcycle takes up almost all of the painting with its front wheel cropped.
A hyperrealist oil painting of a silver airplane called Escape II is shown. The nose, cockpit, and wings of the airplane appear on the bottom left of the painting.
This hyperrealist oil painting shows a black and blue motorcycle parked on the grass in front of a low hedge on a neighborhood street. A white helmet and a black leather jacket hang from the seat.
In this hyperrealist painting, a gray car drives down a two-lane road with a guard rail and cityscape in the background. A rearview mirror appears at the top of the painting.
A storefront window display with a red awning and four female mannequins is the subject of this hyperrealist painting. The mannequins are wearing mid-length red, yellow, and blue dresses.
In this hyperrealist oil painting, a window display appears beneath an awning that reads “North Beach Leather.” In the window are four mannequins wearing blue outfits, red wigs, and red shoes.
A Bendel's window display is the subject of this hyperrealist oil painting. In the window, five female mannequins wearing ornate dresses stand in the light of a red and orange spotlight.
The subjects of this hyperrealist oil painting are a red and a blue motorcycle parked on a street corner. Behind them is a café with an umbrella outside and a row of palm trees.
A hyperrealist oil painting is a close-up of a shiny silver Pontiac GTO with a triple-carburetor engine.

TOM BLACKWELL: The Complete Paintings, 1970–2014

$95.00

BY: LINDA CHASE
PREFACE BY: LOUIS K. MEISEL
FOREWORD BY: CARTER RATCLIFF

Hardcover
11 x 12 inches, 240 pages + 2 gatefolds
291 color plates + 11 black and white illustrations
ISBN: 978-0-9888557-7-9

$95 | £75 | €90

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Tom Blackwell is known for his work in Photorealism, a stylistic genre noted for its ardent embrace of photographic source material. In 1969, he began a series of brashly beautiful motorcycle paintings that established him as one of the founders and foremost artists of the movement. The rich subject material offered by urban store windows became another abiding interest. In his store-window paintings, Blackwell captures the counterpoint between the idealized reality within the store display and the bustling urban life reflected in the glass. As author Linda Chase remarks, “The magic of these paintings resides in the artist’s ability to transform the arbitrary photographic information into dynamic and complex artistic compositions, revealing and clarifying the image while preserving its mystery.”

In conjunction with his Photorealist paintings, Blackwell has produced a related body of work that is allegorical in its perspective. Combining photo-derived images, he addresses themes such as the passage of time, the fragility of nature, and the continuity that weaves through human history. The paintings, rich in symbolism and interpretive possibilities, fascinate and impress viewers with the breadth of Blackwell’s abilities.

Linda Chase is the author of several works on contemporary Realism in addition to monographs on Photorealist painters including Ralph Goings, John Salt, and Richard Estes. She has been the director and curator of national and international Realist exhibitions and has written numerous catalogues for museums and galleries. Carter Ratcliff is a leading art critic, author, poet, and contributing editor of Art in America. His books on art include The Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art, as well as John Singer Sargent, Alex Katz, Andy Warhol, and others. Louis K. Meisel is an American author, art dealer, and proponent of the Photorealist art movement. He has written four volumes documenting Photorealism, illustrated with paintings by the leading artists of the genre over the last fifty years. Meisel continues to promote Photorealism and organizes international exhibitions for leading Photorealist artists.