Artist of Real and Fantastic in High Key Impressionist and Dutch Traditional in Faux Gold Frames

Black Marsha "Hero of Stonewall", Watercolor on paper, 8” x 10”, June 1, 1993 , Available

The Stonewall Inn, located at 51 Christopher Street, first opened its door in the Depression year of 1930, having been converted from two hundred-year-old stables. Utilized for several decades as a hall for private parties, business banquets, and weddings celebrations, in the decade of the sixties it became a tawdry gay bar frequented by preppie types and drag queens like. A callboy service sometimes operated on the second floor. On the evening of June 28^th, 1969, it became the improbable site of the Battle of Stonewall during a police raid of the place. Robert Bryan, a men’s fashion magazine editor, was there that night and remembers policemen being driven back by angry drag queens tired of being intimidated and oppressed by John Law. A prominent “solider” in the melee was Black Marsha (a.k.a.) Marsha P. Johnson or Malcolm Michaels), a black drag queen and panhandling Christopher Street personality for over twenty years. Read the full story in Greenwich Village, a primo guide by John Gilman and Bob Heide from St. Martins press. Tom Lohre did the 27 paintings for the guide. Tom lived on Christopher Street for twenty years.

Being a Meat Market Pioneer - Fixing the Plumbing at 5 Ninth Avenue in 1988, video by Nelson Sullivan

FORT GANSEVOORT 5 Ninth Avenue, NYC, 10014 | gallery@fortgansevoort.com | (917) 639 - 3113
A Look Back: 50 Years After Stonewall
Opening On: Thursday, June 27, 6 – 8 PM June 27 – July 27, 2019
Fort Gansevoort presents A Look Back: 50 Years After Stonewall, organized by Lucy Beni and Adam Shopkorn. The exhibition commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, a six-day riot said to have been spontaneously set off by Marsha P. Johnson in protest of one of many regular police raids at The Stonewall Inn, a gay bar located in New York City’s Greenwich Village. This event marks the beginning of the Gay Liberation movement and the contemporary fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the United States.
A Look Back: 50 Years After Stonewall unites the work of queer artists living and producing in and around New York City beginning around the time of the Stonewall Uprising in 1969 and leading into the 1980s. This is only a portion of the story, an incomplete history, most especially given that the Gay Liberation movement and its coinciding contemporary art market had not placed transgender voices nor people of color at the forefront of the conversation. The exhibition includes both documentation of the Gay Liberation movement and a look back at the work made by LGBTQ+ artists during this time. Central to the work included are the subjects of protest, revolt, celebration, and love. Kate Millett’s sculpture, American Flag Goes to Pot (1970) provides a blunt protest to government authority, while Joan E. Biren’s photograph’s document the tenderness of love between two women. The work made during the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, beginning in 1981, becomes entangled in death and remembrance, an epidemic defining this decade most especially in the New York City queer community and resulting in a tremendous amount of loss. Peter Hujar, Paul Thek and David Wojnarowicz’s work all reflect this tragic time. Highlighted in the exhibition is the work of Nelson Sullivan, who throughout the 1980s lived at 5 Ninth Avenue where Fort Gansevoort is now located. Sullivan passed away in 1989. Nelson Sullivan documented queer New York City in the 1980s through a dedication to filming everything. His videos focus largely on his neighborhood and the downtown nightlife scene; one full of life and color and regularly including personalities such as RuPaul, Sylvia Miles, Michael Musto, Dean Johnson, Ethyl Eichelberger, and Lady Bunny. A selection of Sullivan’s many videos in and around his home in the Meatpacking District are included in the exhibition. The third floor of the exhibition pays respect to Sullivan’s legacy through a collection of photographs taken by his friends and a painted portrait of Sullivan himself, momentarily returned to its original home at 5 Ninth Avenue. Featured artists in the exhibition include Joan E. Biren, Jimmy DeSana, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Flloyd, Efrain John Gonzalez, Barbara Hammer, Harmony Hammond, Lyle Ashton Harris, Peter Hujar, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Greer Lankton, Tom Lohre, Kate Millett, John Simone, Nelson Sullivan, Paul Thek, Paula Gately Tillman, David Wojnarowicz, Martin Wong among others. Also included in the exhibition is ephemera such as pride and protest buttons, Tee Corinne’s 1975 Cunt Coloring Book, and the 1970s lesbian newspaper The Furies.

Brief History of Christopher Street by Tom Lohre
March 29th, 1993
Stonewall just didn't happen where it did in Manhattan. The stores, bars and apartment buildings around Sheridan Square caused the standoff to happen where it did. The West Village was the source for piano bar entertainment back in the late 1940's. Maries Crisis, Grove Street, and The Duplex were all just across the street from another very old bar the Lion's Head which is just next to the wall that started Stonewall. The Gay Landmark bookstore is on Christopher and Hudson and was there 25 years ago, long before the street was declared Gay. The man who started Stonewall was called "Black Madonna, Black Marsha". He was a popular drag queen and always a fixture on the Street. He started it and he was killed down by the pier at the foot of Christopher just this last Summer. His body was found floating in the river.
Now in Sheridan Square you have the statues to mark Stonewall. There was a commotion this last summer when the statues were dedicated because the statues were done by a non-gay artist. The statues are life casts of two men together standing and two women together sitting. There is no plague marking the title or artist. I wondered why the statues do not get any graffiti on them. I think the city painted the statues with subway car paint, the stuff that you can remove all graffiti from. Sometimes there's a hat on one of them and another is holding something.
Sheridan Square is the center of the West Village. To mark the spot is Village Cigars and the two billboards above it. You can always tell what year it is by the billboards. In 1976 there was a billboard of "Hibiscus and the Screaming Violets". Hibiscus was his stage name, but he was the consummate entertainer in the vein of Voguing today. His day name was George Harris and it was he who was seen putting the flower into the soldier’s gun during the peace rally in Washington in the seventies. George was a flamboyant entertainer at heart, raised by two parents, who were also entertainers, along with five other siblings. They all lived in a classic ten by forty tenement apartment. Each child had a bunk along one wall about two thirds the way up that they decorated.
George was one of the first to die of aids. Hibiscus and the Screaming Violets was his last production. There was recently a play written about his life. His brothers and sisters wrote, produced it and it played at La Mamma's this last year.
At the foot of Christopher is a fenced in concrete dock. It used to be a nice dock with a open view but now it is sterile with a chain link fence around it, like a holding cage for people. Anyone can go there but next to it going uptown is a falling down old wood pier. It's fence in but there is always one of the son gods that comes down with the wire clippers to cut the fence every day and then all the men go out. People go out there to be naked. That goes on all summer long. The block association does not want this to go on so it wires up the fence every night. There used to be some empty buildings on the next pier also going uptown. It was in those buildings that Tennessee Williams lived in the fifties. The building always was a place for drifters to live in and tricks to be had.
I went swimming at the end of the pier this last summer. It was the first time in fifteen years living there. I didn't but my head under water and took a shower afterwards! The water seemed clear. It's a whole lot better than it was except for the heavy metals. The whole edge along the river used to be a nice railing but it has fallen into disrepair and has been replaced by a road barrier. They are slowly repairing the river’s edge. Starting in Wall Street and Battery City the waterfront is undergoing a revitalization. The vitalization has reached just below Christopher Street Pier to the air ducts of the Holland Tunnel. They have laid in a beautiful park around the ducts. The West side highway, a six-lane roadway, travels the length of the West side. Between the highway and the water’s edge is about hundred feet. A parking lot used to be the use for this space before the city gave it back to the pedestrians. It used to be the only free unrestricted place in the city to park your car. Now it is a open space where they have a summer market. It is a real bizarre. Everybody comes in with their stuff and the fair sort of lends itself to local people putting up their wares. The feeling is folksy. Of course, that is because of regulation on who gets to come in.
Every year they have the Gay dance on the nice pier during Gay Pride Week. They really pack them in for that event. There is a little street called Weehawken and it turns into the back room during the festival. It is a little street running three hundred feet from Christopher St. to the next street uptown. Lots of behavior going on and it hasn't changed much since aids. The guys don't seem to care at all. The only comment you get is how could those men be doing that. Blow jobs, no rubbers, the whole shi bang. Booths are set up on the street and it becomes rather dark on that street. I think it's mostly a golden shower place during the fair. I wouldn't doubt that there was a guy laying along the wall being pissed on. I didn't see it. Surly there was nothing there that doesn't happen in the bedroom of the straight world and since it's a man's world, men do it outside.
The Duplex, a piano bar, is in a new place now. It was on Grove Street next to Maries Crisis but it moved to a new location in a triangle building formed by 7th Avenue and Christopher Street just across from Sheridan Square. A old kiosks used to be there. The building started around 1986 took forever to build probably because of the historical codes for buildings in the district. Across the street in front of Village Cigars is a plaque in the sidewalk that makes mention that this spot has never been given to the city. This probably means that you don't have to abided by the building codes.
The park marking Sheridan Square wasn't always like it is now. In the recent past the place was quite seedy. The whole park has been rebuilt even to the newly laid brick sidewalks and state of the art benches that are configured to not allow you to sleep on them. They put benches in the center and lock the gate at night occasionally. It has been restored to the old way. It looks old but it wasn't like that, there was a old falling down fence and the sidewalks were concrete.
The neighborhood is slowly reverting back to a upscale area where every shop has a shop keeper. It used to be that way in the late forties and early fifties. Then it went into slow period of decline because of families moving out to the suburbs which made it really cheap to rent apartments. You could change your apartment every year, nobody locked their doors. Artists had taken over. Artists painted on the street. Drug store Johnnies where there. Slowly it was the late fifties and the beat nicks were there. Living was easy. Nobody wanted to live there because all the hippies were there. Washington Square Park bred the folk song. Love was free. New York University was buying up all the buildings. It was a college neighborhood.
Most of the shops were thrift stores. Local people selling whatever they had. The village reached it's low point financially and its high point fun wise. Flower power was Queen. The Lindsey administration had gone out and the city was broke. Because of government spending, rents and living rose all throughout the eighties, bringing the same apartment that was $150 in 1976 to $700 in 1993. Local shop keepers were driven out because of the rising rents. Only the high priced, high volume stores and franchised stores could survive. Upscale people started moving in because the Village was the most desirable place to live in the city and all the good apartment were taken mid-town. More and more buildings were redone to take advantage of the higher rents.
With the upscale tenants comes a stronger block association and that means Christopher Street will be tamed down. With people paying eight hundred dollars for a small apartment right on the river don't want to contend with a large group of gay men drinking beer from paper bags and milling about. The people living on Christopher Street didn't have anything to do with it becoming the gay street. At first it was hard to accept getting spit at and harassed being a straight couple walking down Christopher Street. Then people started accepting one another which started getting a younger gay crowd. But that led to the poorer gay men spending more and more time milling about on the street. Voguing started then from boys standing around dishing one another. Black Madonna was murdered because of this phenomenon. The pier just got too dangerous. Christopher Street is now really ethic gay New York and it's going to stay that way. Tom lived at 89 Christopher Street #2 for twenty years from 1976 to 1996. The first several years he worked on Madison Avenue in advertising. After producing several master works in oil painting, he left Madison Avenue. Tom filled ten sketch books during this period. More were lived in the beginning while Tom was learning. The sketches here were in Tom's second from last sketch book. There are still a few pages left in the back. During this period Tom was working in Greenville, South Carolina for a year on several commissions and would from time to time return home to NYC. He finally finishes work in Greenville and spent his last full summer in New York City in 1991. Tom spent much of his time on the road spending summers in Nantucket and winters in Palm Beach before getting married and moving back to his hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio.

2018 Crossing

All paintings except "Fiona & The Whale" on display in the Clifton Market Window Box, 319 Ludlow Ave; Cincinnati OH 45220

The 387 page journal starts off with a Image / Caption chapter of the complete voyage followed by lengthy day by day notes, images and thoughts. The kind of sailing book he likes to read.

Painting lace without trying to be tacky is tough. I think I have it but wish I could jump off and see the old masters at our local museums. Chances are I would find out they had just as much trouble. My mentor attacked the situation with heavy paint on a fan brush.
Painting lace above flesh for the last several days. It is the hardest part of a portrait. The next is the face. The face comes through by it's self. The lace has hidden the flesh under it. Without painting completely the transitions is not to paint. So then constant selected, loaded, and strokes of color achieves something. CM Posting

Days on end without picking up a brush. Many other distractions made it into a classic artist block. Now back carefully finishing edges and filling in the left hand of Solomon. Though the face, hair and see through lace is still to be done the painting is in its final troughs and will be done before you know it. Started in 1980 with one girlfriend and then another now with Tom's wife.

The fingers of Solomon next.
There is little difference between applying paint and leaving it there.

Working on the ear and redoing the Poser image (the digital manikin to see the shadows) slowly laying in the face, a little everyday and soon it is over. The ear has the personality. Irene's is straightforward (Up and down vertically, if it was slanted back it would show she thinks out of the box) large to hear everything said (small ears like Queen Elizabeth's means she acts alone) Helen's is small, Irene always asks if her hair is poking out. I say poking out is sexy remembering Princess Graces hair. The Renoir bathers hair is pulled up into a loose bun but here Irene's hair will be naturally her own.
Finishing the bust and arms
Filling in the face and cleaning up the edges.

Laying in transparent surface of canvas color and flesh color using the old combinations of Umber, Ochre, Red Cadium and Alizarin, never allowing the canvas not to be seen,
Started laying in flesh through camisole,
Laying in and repairing the form with castor paint is not like painting with regular oil paint, the painting application is different on almost every level, no fluidity, replaced with complete control working period of fifteen days and then after that can be removed easily, castor oil is alive and moves across the surface after it is applied. Painting the camisole is an exercise in painting silk or shiny linen, it is more fun to have the striking highlights using the accidental manner of applying paint and then making what you can of the strokes to keep the fabric alive, Shadows must be transparent thinly veiled transparent dark color with the color of the canvas in this case light tan, the old masters worked this point to a point
Projected Solomon's hand and confirmed Sharon's composition, her right arm obscures Solomon from seeing her. After researching reclining figures with their hands behind the head the subtle nature of expression will carry such a posture.
Laying in and repairing the form with castor paint is not like painting with regular oil paint, the color is different on almost every level, no fluiditly, repalced with complete control working period of fifteen days and then after that can be removed easily,

Painting the camisole is an excerize in painting silk or shinny linen, it is more fun to have the striking highlights using the accidental manner of applying paint and then making what you can of the strokes to keep the fabric alive, Shadows must be transparent tinely veiled transparent dark color with the color of the canvas in this case light tan, Gun Violence

Projected Solomon's hand and confirmed Sharon's composition, her right arm obscures Solomon from seeing her. After researching reclining figures with their hands behind the head the subtle nature of expression will carry such a posture.
Worked on finalizing Sharon
Projected the Poser and made adjustments in the drawing. WIll redraw the composition using Bridgman's Book. The angle of the breasts with the arms needs to be verfied.
Making a mountain out of a mole hill, suggesting form from accidents in the initial application, stopping when form reaches its maximum without a struggle, suggesting without telling, using the subtle nature of darkness when approaching light and light when approaching darkness in the edges. Once laying in then change what cannot be an leave what could be. applied for Golden Ticket, worked on advance Poser final composition for projection
Laying in linen,
Laying in the linen, using the complicated nature of castor oil and powdered pigment scrapping with a rubber spatula brush creating a veiled transparent colored film allowing the laying in to determine the shape instead of the image of the prop.

Started in 1980 with a then girlfriend, then another and finally being completed with his wife.
The name "rose of Sharon" first appears in English in 1611 in the King James Version of the Bible. In the song of Solomon ch2 v1 the speaker (the beloved) says "I am the rose of Sharon, the lily of the valley". I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love. Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples: for I am sick of love. His left hand is under my head, and his right hand doth embrace me. I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, by the roes, and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, till he please. The voice of my beloved! behold, he cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills. My beloved is like a roe or a young hart: behold, he standeth behind our wall, he looketh forth at the windows, shewing himself through the lattice. My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the stairs, let me see thy countenance, let me hear thy voice; for sweet is thy voice, and thy countenance is comely. Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes. My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feedeth among the lilies. Until the day break, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be thou like a roe or a young hart upon the mountains of Bether.

Tom started 360° works when he discovered the feature on his smart phone. The Mandela type image intrigued him and he realized he could paint such works by squeezing the image needed for the 360° into the size needed for the canvas. In this work the round image created by the 360°Fly video camera is distorted into a 20 x 24 image projected onto the drawing paper then refined. The first three works were impressionist landscapes so abstract you could barely discern the sky from the land. Tom realized detail had to be in the forefront if such works would be recognizable. The natural direction for the next work would be a figurative piece. By a stroke of good luck, Tom gathered together a group of girls, daughters of friends, at Clifton Meadows, the neighborhood private pool, to pose in a circle around the 360°Fly video camera. Extracting images from the video he composed the layout of the drawing. He removed the pool chairs and place the women on the grass in Devou Park telling the story while exploring the park for subject matter for the FreshArt he came across 11 women bathing in a little known pond in the park.

Bathers, 20" x 24", Pencil on paper, for Devou Park Berhinger Crawford Museum's 2017 FreshArt

Cartoons

New cartoons from college days. NKU spring 1971 cartoons for the "Northerner." Tom was managing editor and cartoonist for three years.

170314 Having to trouble shoot a Dell Inspiron 1100 not booting up cleanly. An alarm goes off and it goes to safe boot mode. I am running the original Home version of XP without updates and RoboLab 2.94. Keeping the 2007 working original program until new application arm is working. Side arm needs to come in and heat up surface where oil pastel dot is applied and move aside for the application wheel to rotate to the color and move down to apply the dot. Thinking it will be a side arm where the heating box flips down, moves into dot area for allotted time then out.

Tom's friend Saad Goshen publishes a book of poems matched to illustrations. This work is one of those illustrations. Tom lost interest in the work after completing the drawing and palette. Three weeks later he relearned everything he forgot creating figures with watercolor. Some of the staff of Hillary Clinton's Clifton, Cincinnati office played the roles: Caroline Lembright, Umeirra Umy Savani, Elena Saltzman, Radheya Kulkarni, Elena Saltzman, Jordan Thornlow, Jalakoi Solomon and Sean Young . Tom volunteered with them. Picking images of them off their Facebook pages. This incentive made it possible to plow through the work time from January 1 to February 23.

Working on a complicated four month long painting makes for mixing things up a bit. Herman Melville and William Adolphe Bouguereau would be in their studios all day and others did not really know what they did in there, Tom's wife thinks the same thing. It is fun to think they were working all the time on the work but they were not unlike Tom, answering letters, cleaning, working on peripheral things; spending a lot of time working on refining the craft, researching, making new devices and procedures that make the work fun and easier. After years of wanting to make videos of painting it was not until now Tom set up a technique to do just that. It came together when he found a contraption to hold documents while typing, similiar to a desk top lamp that clamps on the table and allows you to move it all around. It makes it possible to sneak into the painting space with a USB cable video camera.

In painting a complicated work the question comes up, “Is it worth it?”
Working to duplicate the old masters, taking time to study and produce, is the resource which is bottomless. Money may be in short supply but there is always plenty of time. Giving the work all the time it needs to achieve success is the least the artist can do. Material goods may be in short supply but never to the level of preventing work. No one askes how long did it take? They think the artist took as long as he wanted.
If an artist is attempting to emulate an old master work wouldn’t that mean he would spend as long as he needed? The artist is not setting the standard, the standard is already set.
Though it takes six months to paint such a work and the payment is a fraction of the time spent, is this a good use of the artist’s time? He enjoys matching the level of work and spending hours in front of a charming painting, albeit to him; not unlike sitting in a museum.
Tom learned that the painter he is emulating, Jan van der Heyden, created paintings for the market. He was an engineer and inventor of gas street lighting and firefighting equipment. Tom was disillusioned at the painters work, creating paintings that seemed fads in Dutch society. It may have well been a fad at the time and he was encouraged and rewarded to produce as many as he could. The resulting paintings do not have a heart and soul in it as Tom understands. Tom searched for personal commissions Heyden produced that had intimacy but found none. Though known to paint every brick and leaf, resorting to making a stamp you could apply to the wet paint to set up the painting of leaves and bricks, Heyden’s work has failed to inspire Tom though he has been a vehement follower for twenty years.
In the end, painting “Evanswood Home”, Tom feels the only take away is to continue to paint in transparent medium since it gives the painting an extra oeuvre. In the future Tom seeks to use transparent mediums with phosphorescent paint.

Twilight Tree Line, 24" x 18", Glow, Oil pastel, April 10. 2016, dark view, Blob manner

Best to view with a clicker. Hang the work in low light plugging in the light with the clicker module. View by clicking to turn off light.

These images do not show the real view of the painting. Cameras receive and process light differently than eyes. The twilight view is the best approximation of what it is like to view the painting in its optimal.

Tom started working with glow in the dark colors while developing his Lego painting machine in 2003. In 2015 he produced two paintings with the sky and water being glow and the rest normal colors. All the paintings are oil pastels melted on hot metal, a technique he started with his painting machine. One of the paintings, a view of Fountain Square, hangs in the Cincinnati City Hall, part of an art for sale/display program curated by Jan Brown Cheeco.

This painting moves the process a step further using only glow in the dark colors in ernst as a standalone medium. The work is developed on three levels: daylight, dark and half-light or twilight version (the way the work is supposed to be viewed.) Not being able to work with the color in the manner it is to be viewed is the stumbling block. It is like working in an alternate universe. The glow colors have a comforting manner about them for when you close your eyes the colors you see are glow in the dark. The preliminary workup is done in the computer with two layers, the layer as the painting looks in daylight and the way the painting looks in the dark. Half of the colors are a milky yellow white and cannot be distinguished one from another. The other half are tinted in an approximation of the glow color.

The next glowing painting will be a sea scape with Moby Dick, whaleship and whaleboat. Tom hopes to advance his study focusing on the twilight version of the work carefully taking advantage of the brightest glowing colors making them the bright reflection on forms and the lesser glowing colors the shadow colors. Tom will rough out the scene in 3D using Poser, then moving it to paint after the composition, reflection and colors are set.

Tom made a painting machine out of Lego's Mindstorm Invention System in 2003. To make a machine that paints you must simplify the application process. The stroke the machine used is the same as this work, melting wax on a hot surface. These same simplifications also stimulate the viewer as a new aggressive impressionism. His first study technique was painting copies in museums, learning principals of art that could not be taught. His second study technique was creating machines that copied the process of painting. He discovered more principals of art that otherwise could not have learned.

His purpose in these paintings is to reveal his spirit while illustrating life. He seeks a visual vibration that inspires and stimulates the viewer to see beauty, truth and order, using unconventional methods. He seeks to discover underlining principals not revealed in normal study. This work differs from others because it goes a step further, applying traditional study techniques using new methods.

Judy as woman in Bouguereau, 16" x 20", Traditional academic manner, Portraits, Traditional

Three views of Fountain Square LXX, Glow, Oil pastel, 12" x 16", Wednesday, January 14, 2015, these three images are all the same painting

Mother Daughter VIII, Second state, 20" x 24", Tuesday, November 25, 2014, Portraits, Figure, Traditional

SOS ART 2014A community art show and event of creative expressions for Peace and Justice
Late May into June @The Art Academy of Cincinnati, 1212 Jackson St, downtown Cincinnati

At 11 p.m. Monday, June 18, 2012 fifteen-year-old Africa Hope was killed by a stray bullet at 1700 Vine Street, Cincinnati, Ohio. This portrait placed at the site after being in the SOS show.Winning second place in the juried Golden Ticket Art Show at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center in Clifton, Cincinnati, Ohio verified what Tom is experiencing. Realtor yard signs repainted with a portrait of a gun violence victim placed where they died, provide a positive colorful happy catalyst to solve gun violence. Help a "at Risk" person. Be part of the solution. Apathy is the problem. The signs—revered by community— are everlasting remembrances. With each sign Tom experiences something like a block buster movie with characters larger than life. He learns about the victim and meets the family. They live larger lives, the highest highs and lowest lows. The portraits are larger than art. Tom becomes a pawn in a complex battle to live in a safe productive world. Creating a painting against gun violence does not solve the problem. It is the grunt on the ground that solves gun violence. Social networks solve gun violence. Slogans, art, songs and preaching help solve gun violence but it is the grunt on the ground makes the change. Tom plans on painting at these spots looking for the beautiful. He will befriend the residences and make a change. With everyone stepping up and taking back their streets we can solve this problem. Many people are working on this problem. Many events draw attention to gun violence. He adds this ongoing project to the battle.

Tom Lohre wins Second Place at the Golden Ticket September 7, 2012 for Earnest Crear, Latex on board, 50” x 19” x 1”, May 15, 2012, 18” x 12” board from a realtor sign painted on both sides an impressionistic portrait of Earnest Crear and placed in metal realtor frame. To be placed at Rockdale Avenue and Knotts Street where Earnest Crear was fatally shot, August 18, 2007. Full story at SOS.htm

Tom Lohre as Parsee

16” X 20”, Oil on canvas, work in progress, Portraits, Traditional

Christmas 2008 Helen XIV, ink on paper board, 8" x 10", December 25, 2009, Portraits, Drawings

Richard T Farmer, Oil on board, Portraits, 12" x 16", April 18th, 2008, Richard Farmer, Founder & Chairman of the Board of Cintas Corporation spoke at Xavier University on April 18th, 2008 as part of the Distinguished Speakers Series, "10 Important Experiences Over 50 Years in Business."

Rhett Fire & Mel Odem, 5' x 4', oil on canvas, July 1st, 1983, Portraits, Commission

Helen, 36" x 40", oil on canvas, painted for the 2006 Tall Stacks Celebration in Cincinnati

Sydney wears a tutu from the Cincinnati Ballet. She is painted as an Ice Fairy in "The Nutcracker." Commission

Your face in a masterpiece Pick any painting in the Cincinnati Art Museum and Tom will paint your face in it. Photo: United Press International 1979.Portraits

Home Portraits

Bahamian Home, 20" x 16", Watercolor, 1995

THE GREAT TOMASO

The bicycle has it’s own colorful propeller and balloons attached to a bar that encircles the driver and passenger. As they ride, many times they leave the ground.The pushcart is the circus floor for the small Art Machines

Chad Johnson, 16" x 20", September 2007, Wax on aluminum sheet
This is the second painting done with the Lego robot assistant, "Artisto." The face is a Bengal receiver. The face is set in the mask of a tiger. Tom used strong colors to accent the eight colors available in the robot assisted process.Irene, Oil pastel on foil, 16" x 20", August 2007

The first painting done by "Artisto" using glow in the dark colors makes use of a strong combination of colors for a powerful graphic effect. The sky comes to life in the dark. Two different glow in the dark colors, blue and orange, where used for the background.

Shown at
January 2008 at Sitwell's Coffee House, 324 Ludlow Ave., Cincinnati OH 45220, 2008 Show Brochure

April 18 to May 18, 2008 at Visual History Gallery, Mike Wilger, owner, 1989 Madison Road Cincinnati, OH 45202, mwilger@fuse.net, 513-871-6065, Visual History Gallery

Being a Meat Market Pioneer - Fixing the Plumbing at 5 Ninth Avenue in 1988 by Nelson Sullivan.

Click to begin enjoying your home even more during cold dry days with an indoor waterfall.

Your Children Can Decorate Your Home

Learn how Tom supplies materials and guidance for you or your children to paint.

Complete Works, Portraits, Landscapes, Still Lifes, Sculpture, Lego Robot Artist...

Traditional and Impressionist Paintings in Gold Frames

2018 Crossing

Cartoons