Bio

Having grown up in New York City, Tom Lovell developed a fascination for art early in his life.  Lovell spent countless hours visiting New York’s famed Grand Central Gallery and it was this fascination that compelled him to pursue illustration as a career first.  He then went on to earn a B.F.A. in Illustration at Syracuse University.  Famed illustrators Howard Pyle and Harold Von Schmidt were two of Lovell’s influences.  He was such an accomplished illustrator that by his Junior year in college, he was already earning a living as an illustrator and would do so for the next 40 years until 1968.  Lovell recounted that the turning point in his career came in the late sixties when he was commissioned to do a series of paintings of the Permian Basin for the Petroleum Museum in Midland, Texas.  Lovell realized that in order to portray the West accurately, he would have to move there and he did so in 1975, settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was also in 1975 that he was inducted into the Cowboy Artists of America. Over the course of his amazing career, Lovell won two gold and one silver award for oil painting at the Cowboy Artists of America Annual Show and Sale.  He also earned two Purchase Awards at the Prix de West Show and Sale at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1992, which has been conferred on only three other artists.  Lovell’s work can be found in such renowned museums as the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, the Pearce Collection of Western Art in Corsicana, Texas, and the Museum of Western Art in Kerrville, Texas.