Tom Besson has painted since childhood; He
attended University of Houston Art College for 3 years before
“dropping-out” and moving to the counter-culture Austin of
1974. A member of alternative artists’ communities in
pre-gentrification Clarksville, “F’Art’Sake” in
the O’Joy Tirebiter’s Commune, Vanishing Point Art School,
Alternate Current Gallery, and Elgin, Texas, he has developed a
painting style he calls “neo-vorticism.” A color-saturated
palette, personal symbolism, and fluid imagery characterize his work.
In the early 1980’s he departed from working exclusively in paint
to sculpt limestone and marble.
In the mid-90’s Besson rediscovered
his Czech roots. He retraced his immigrant ancestors’ journey
back to Moravia where he now has a summer studio in the mountains.
Czech imagery and themes appear in his large-scale paintings and small
painted sketches. His current work has been displayed in exhibitions
sponsored by the Czech Ministry of Culture and in contemporary art
galleries in Texas and the Czech Republic.
Tom Besson has work in the permanent
collection of the University of Houston and in private collections in
Ireland, Wales, Czech Republic, Canada and the United States.
Tom Besson was born in 1951 in Houston,
Texas. He grew up in Galveston, San Antonio, Houston, Beaumont, and
Wallis, a product of Nineteen-Fifties America, redneck Texas, a Czech
immigrant subculture, and Roman Catholicism.
