John Greiner-Ferris Studio
  • Home
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Paintings & Drawings
  • Riding Shotgun
  • Home
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Paintings & Drawings
  • Riding Shotgun
Search

Provincetown Banner: Truro painter Thomas Watson goes forward into the past

9/11/2019

0 Comments

 
Every artist has to eat. A lot of artists teach. I continue with my established career of using two of my artistic talents for monetary gain: writing about and photographing the things that I care about. One of the things I do is string for the art editor of the Provincetown Banner, interviewing (but I shy away from that word; I tell them that we're just going to talk) and photographing the artists that either live on Cape Cod, or come through for other reasons.
Picture
Truro painter Thomas Watson goes forward into the past
By John Greiner-Ferris / Banner Correspondent
Posted Aug 1, 2019 at 8:36 AM


When it comes down to it, most of us simply want to find our place in this world, and our lives are a quest to fulfill that need. Truro painter Thomas A.D. Watson might ponder this notion a little more than most of us, though, because it often seems that he was born in the wrong time period — almost a century too late. That weighs on him.

Watson grew up in rural Vermont in a self-sufficient family that hunted, fished, grew its own food, and even made its own toys. It was a hard life, but to this day, Watson continues to admire its simplicity and down-to-earth values. His happy childhood ended when his parents divorced and his mother moved to Cape Cod, while his father, an accomplished illustrator, stayed in Vermont. From the time he was 12 to 18 years old, Watson never saw his father. “I did live with Dad for a year after college,” Watson says, “and it drove me nuts, because he was married to his work. It was all he thought about.” But time may have tempered that memory. After a moment’s pause, Watson continues, “I can relate to that now. I’ll be 54 this September, and there are creative things I want to accomplish.”

It also drove Watson nuts that his father pursued illustration instead of fine art painting, as his grandfather did — his father’s father — who was a founder and editor of American Artist Magazine. “Dad would have made an excellent fine artist,” Watson says. “Instead, he got into the illustration racket.”

Watson, a graduate of Rhode Island School of Design, has found success as a fine artist, and he has done it on his own terms. While his work is in private collections and those of corporations, museums and embassies around the world, the only way to see it locally is to visit him at his studio at 45 Depot Road during visiting hours (9 a.m. to noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays, June to September) or by appointment (call 508-349-1631, or email tadw@thomasadwatson.com). He also has an annual studio reception, and the next one is on Tuesday from 5 to 8 p.m. “I’ve always been proud that I’ve sold my own work,” Watson says. “And I’ve especially liked the chance to interact with the people who buy it.”

Watson says that the reason he paints is to spend time with the ghosts of his past. Those ghosts include a mother whom he loved dearly, an older brother who was his childhood hero, the grandfather he never knew, and, of course, his illustrator father. Look at one of his recent landscapes, and that yearning for the past becomes clear. Watson’s timeless, slightly abstracted paintings of the Cape and the Adirondacks seem to ache for that sense of place he had growing up in Vermont. His paintings are almost completely devoid of human beings, and if one or two figures do happen to make an appearance, they are depicted small and at a distance, completely subservient to the landscape. Watson seems to paint from the haunted viewpoint of a man who has gone out the back door to take a walk to clear his head, saying he’ll be back in an hour. And you just don’t know: maybe he will come back, or maybe he won’t.

It’s not that Watson lives in the past — he seems to live because of it. Talking about a recent trip to the Adirondacks with his teenage son, Watson revels in the father-son memories he has collected — how he and his son woke every morning before dawn to fish for trout; how throughout the day he and his son sat side by side, Watson painting and his son tying fishing flies; how his son unpacked the copy of Hemingway’s Nick Adams stories that he had given him but never read — “Some of the best outdoor literature out there,” Watson says. But the real clincher to the trip was the day that Watson’s son, after rowing an Adirondack guide boat, expressed an interest in owning one. An old-timer had one in his barn and gave it to him, and Watson and his son together will be refurbishing it this fall. “Because I missed out on so many years with my father, I thought, here’s my chance to get those years back,” Watson says. “When periods of harmony and happiness come down the pike, you take them, because the opportunity will go away.”

Watson is a shy, reclusive man. “I didn’t inherit the gene to interact with people,” he says. A couple of years ago he began questioning his role as an artist in the community in which he now lives, not where he lived as a child. This led him to begin painting the boats that work the waters around Cape Cod, and that, in turn, has led to his being asked to make a painting of the fishing boat Joan and Tom for next year’s Blessing of the Fleet. The request delights him, and makes him proud. “This is a way I can give something back to the fishing community,” he says. And, maybe, it will help him find that sense of place and purpose in life.

https://provincetown.wickedlocal.com/entertainment/20190801/truro-painter-thomas-watson-goes-forward-into-past
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    John Greiner-Ferris is an artist in the Boston area. Sometimes he makes images. Sometimes he writes. Sometimes he does both.

    Archives

    November 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019

    Categories

    All
    2020
    2022
    Abstract
    Abstract Image
    Abstract Painting
    Acrylic Painting
    Ai Weiwei
    Amy Barrett
    An Artist's Life
    Art And Poetry
    Art During Covid 19
    Art During Covid-19
    Art During Social Distancing
    Art In The Time Of Covid-19
    Art In The Time Of Social Distancing
    Art In The Time Of The Coronavirus
    Art Is Not Precious
    Beard And Weil Galleries
    Boston Artist
    Boston Painter
    Boston Photographer
    Brewster
    Cape Cod
    Cape Cod Bay
    Collage
    Color
    Color In Motion
    Conceptual Art
    Contemporary Art
    Contemporary Art Dealer
    Contemporary Artist
    Contemporary Landscape
    Contemporary Landscape × Contemporary Photographer × Landscape × #wip × Work In Progress
    Contemporary Landscape × Contemporary Photographer × Landscape × #wip × Work In Progress
    Contemporary Photographer
    Contemporary Photography
    Coronavirus
    Curated Fridge
    Curated Fridge Summer 2021 Show
    Dave DeWitt
    Dave's Greens
    Daylgith Savings Time
    Fine Arts Photographer
    Geraniums
    Graffiti Art
    Harvesters
    High Speed
    Highway
    John Greiner Ferris
    John Greiner-Ferris
    Just Kids
    Landscape
    Low Light
    Lunar Eclipse
    Mants Landing
    Massachusetts
    Massachusetts Artist
    May 16
    Memory
    Michele And Donald D'Amour Museum Of Fine Arts
    Microscope
    Microscopic Images
    Mixed Medi
    Mixed Media
    Moderism
    Modern Art
    Modern Landscape
    Multi-media
    Mutli-disciplinarty Artist
    New Year
    Night Photography
    Noh Theater
    Noh Theatrre
    Norton
    Organic
    Organic Farm
    Organic Farming
    Oyster Farming
    Oysters
    Painting
    Painting During The Pandemic
    Patti Smith
    PH21
    Photograhy
    Portugal
    Provincetown
    Provincetown Banner
    Quincy Painter
    Razor Clams
    Robert Mapplethorpe
    Sandwich
    Self-portrait
    SoWa Artist
    Spring
    Springfield Art Museum
    Springfield Museum
    Sprouting Garlic
    Street Art
    Sustainability
    Tennessee Williams
    Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival
    Text Based Paintings
    Text-based Paintings
    The Artist's Life
    Theater
    The Creative Process
    The Lady Aoi
    The Night Of The Iguana
    Time-lapse Photography
    Truro
    Urban Landscape
    Urban Landscape Photography
    Washi Paper
    Wheaton College
    #wip
    Wollaston
    Work In Progress

    RSS Feed

HOME
ABOUT
PORTFOLIO
CONTACT
BLOG
PAINTINGS & DRAWINGS
Picture
All images copyright © John Greiner-Ferris
  • Home
  • About
  • Portfolio
  • Contact
  • Blog
  • Paintings & Drawings
  • Riding Shotgun