BELLINGHAM, WA.- The Whatcom Museum will present Under the Inspiration Tree, a comprehensive exhibition celebrating the 50-year career of esteemed Bellingham painter and printmaker Thomas Wood. The exhibition will showcase nearly 300 original works, including paintings, sculptures, etchings, and pastels, as well as a recreation of the artist’s studio, featuring his 1976 Hunter Penrose printing press. The exhibition will be on view in the Whatcom Museum’s Lightcatcher building from Sept 28, 2024 – March 2, 2025.

“We are honored to present a comprehensive showing of Tom’s work,” said museum Executive Director Patricia Leach. “I don't know of another exhibition that has showcased the breadth and variety of his work at this level, and I hope he would be pleased and proud to be featured in this way.”

Wood started out as a chemistry student at Washington State University, but a six-month sojourn in 1972 to Europe and North Africa with his wife Pamela Brownell introduced him to major works from an incredible range of artistic traditions, ancient architectures, and rich, diverse cultures. Energized by his experiences abroad, Wood shifted course in both his life and educational paths: He relocated to Bellingham, Washington, the following year with Brownell to study drawing and printmaking at the Cornish Institute and at Fairhaven College.

Of this time, Wood wrote, “It was like a sea change in my whole psyche. I was so inspired by the art of Europe, and art just seemed a more powerful thing to do with your life. I read Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, and I wanted to ‘follow my bliss.’”

“Wood was particularly enamored with the highly detailed etchings of Renaissance masters like Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, Francisco Goya, and Hieronymus Bosch,” explained Whatcom Museum Chief Curator Amy Chaloupka. “The ability to achieve detailed and expressive linework and rich tonal range through processes that are part chemistry, part creative transformation, really appealed to him.”

He set out to learn various aspects of traditional printmaking processes and, over the years, returned to Italy and The Netherlands time and again to soak in works and study them further. In Florence, he exhibited and taught at the printmaking school Il Bisonte, and he spent five months in Amsterdam, principally at the Rijksmuseum, studying still life paintings of Dutch masters.

Sarah Harvey, owner and director of Seattle-based Harris Harvey Gallery, which has represented Wood since 1988, said, “Wood was able to combine the technical virtuosity of old-world printmaking with his uniquely subjective viewpoint, nimbly shifting from meditative to symbolist, from naturalist to surrealist, and from the aesthetic to the ironic.”

From the 1980s to the early 2000s, Wood explored pastels, not only as a respite from the intense processes of printmaking but also as a more direct and colorful means to depict the lush landscapes of Skagit Valley and surrounding views of the Salish Sea near his home in Bellingham. He then shifted to oil painting, developing en plein air skills with friend and mentor John Cole while stretching his abilities to mix and apply color in the field – often in less than hospitable weather conditions, which challenged him to work quickly and intuitively.

In 1997, Artweek writer Lois Allan stated that Wood’s “darkly romantic expressionism” was “probably inspired as much by Bellingham’s forested, coastal beauty and dramatic weather as it is by his active and readily accessible subconscious.”

By the late 2010s, Wood was accomplished in a wide range of media and explored themes of abundance, absence, mortality, and conservation through narrative works both introspective and playful that drew from his deep well of imagination. In the last eight years of his life, Wood was assisted in his printing practice by Mandy Turner, who helped him achieve some of his most complicated editions. Turner will be leading printmaking workshops at the Whatcom Museum, using Wood’s original printing press. (Details below.)

Wood’s personal vision is on full display in Under the Inspiration Tree. The exhibition includes hundreds of works gathered from the private collections of more than 35 lenders from across the region and beyond – an unprecedented scope.

Chaloupka said, “Wood was incredibly prolific, and his universal themes strike a chord with viewers, resulting in works that are widely collected. Moreover, those who relate to his work often knew him or got to know him as a friend. We are so grateful to all who were willing to lend works. Their generosity enables the Whatcom Museum to shine a beautiful light on Wood’s work so that audiences might better understand his vibrant soul.”