The Chinese Mountain Drawings of Tom George

Art International - September, 1977

It is interesting to see what an American painter and draughtsman makes of them when he comes face to face with Chinese mountains. Tom George has Iong shown a passion for mountain peaks, and many know him best through his depictions of Norway's stony heights and gorges. It comes as no surprise therefore, that after great effort, he has now succeeded in visiting the People’s Republic of China with only its celebrated mountains in mind.

Yet Tom George’s interest in these eccentric peaks Is wholly unlike that of the classic Chinese painters of the past. For them, the painting of ”mountain-water pictures” was traditionally a philosophical exercise. The hard, resistant mountains were symbols of yang, the soft erosive rivers symbols of yin. These two together represent the nature of the cosmos. Even the differing brush strokes for mountain and river respectively, echoed the opposite forces, the deep black strokes signifying the masculine spirit of Yang, the gray and misty ones the feminine spirit of Yin. ln as much as all opposites (in a Chinese view) form the unity of nature, a “mountain-water picture” is a declaration of the divine harmony.

In Tom George’s approach, the transformation of nature into art is otherwise. He also uses brushes and black ink; but neither his ink nor his brush strokes would ever be mistaken for Chinese ones. As we see from these vigorous examples, it is the rhythms of their forms, as his sable brush follows the towering cliffs and ridges of the peaks, that are his chief interests. When he has finished it each drawing offers a rich abstract pattern, amounting to a kind of distillation of a Kweilin mountain scene. The more reduced they are in their numbers of strokes, the more concentrated is the effect. Each view not only reflects the movements he discovers in these Chinese mountains but the delight he takes in their rhythmic patterns. Thus, a mountaineer’s eye and a devotees feeling combine in all that this artist reports from his exotic journey. Tom George’s Chinese mountains are likely to be most enjoyed and best understood by Western viewers who have been nurtured in the tradition of Rembrandt and Van Gogh. Yet, his bold Western expressionism here offers another bridge to Asia for those who will travel with him.

ART REVIEW; Give His (Abstract) Regards To Norway

The New York Times - August 21, 2005

THE exhibition "Thomas George: A Retrospective" honors a gift by the artist to the Princeton University Art Museum of 37 of his paintings and drawings spanning 50 years.

It is a small but enjoyable show, presenting the opportunity to look at in one place a selection of the work of Mr. George, an 87-year-old Princeton-based painter. It is not often, also, that the lordly Princeton University Art Museum honors local artists.

Mr. George might be ungenerously described as a fringe member of the abstract school. Fringe because he is regarded as something of a pack runner in art historical stakes, but also fringe in the sense that he is not a conventional abstract artist. He makes landscape-based abstractions with a broad range of media, concentrating on capturing mood and atmosphere more than pouring his feelings or emotions into the work.

The exhibition begins with an anomaly -- two figurative studies from the 1950's. They are here to remind us that Mr. George, like most artists of his era, was schooled in drawing. "Portrait Study of Gino" (1951), the most arresting of them, depicts an Italian friend and fellow artist with a disease that prevented him from growing much larger than a child. You sense the sadness in the young man's downcast eyes. He died at age 23.

Landscape dominates from here on out, beginning with "No.17" (1962), a large, beautiful, largely abstract painting and the best work in the exhibition. It brings to mind cloudy, turbulent skies, as well as a forest hillside glimpsed through heavy snow. It also reminded me of a variety of organic natural forms, in particular lichen patches. But it is really just an intuitive accretion of marks and scrapes with a brush and palette knife.

"No.17" was worked up slowly in the studio over days and possibly weeks. That gives it a solidity lacking in other works here, many of which were probably done rapidly out of doors. Beneath the surface also beats movement and feeling, the artist not really knowing entirely -- you sense -- what he is doing or wants to say but going deep into himself. It is risky and a bit out of control, but somehow holds together.

Mr. George loved traveling. Here, on view, are paintings, sketches and drawings from travels to Norway, Japan, Wales, France, Italy, China and other places. Mountains frequently caught his attention, as in a series of schematic brush and ink paintings of the spectacular limestone peaks of Guilin in southern China. Their form is endearingly simple: inky black shapes and wavy lines against a white paper backdrop. But it was Norway, of all places, that exerted the strongest pull on this peripatetic artist. He was enamored of the Lofoten Islands, some 125 miles above the Arctic Circle, and in 1966 established a second home on the Oslo Fjord. He spent the next 30 summers living and working there, camping and painting outdoors in some of the more-remote parts of Norway.

The Norwegian paintings, three of which are here, hint at various different artists and art styles. The black ink on paper format and calligraphic brushstrokes recall Chinese scroll painting, while the choice of picturesque mountain landscapes follows closely in the footsteps of a slew of painters from the late 18th and 19th centuries allied with Romanticism, a pan-European phenomenon that, in art at least, stressed the heroic and sublime.

Mr. George also painted extensively in the United States, often in the Southwest but also in his home state. Showing here, for instance, are some pastel paintings (from a long series produced between 1984 and 1996) done by the pond at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. They are soft, fuzzy and intimate, the artist delicately recording the play of light, its movements and its effects on foliage. They are an avatar of the exquisite.

Thomas George - Williams Gallery Exhibit

Williams Gallery - October 23, 1999

An internationally recognized artist, Thomas George amazes us again with a new series of extraordinarily beautiful watercolors and, on a grander scale, a powerful grouping of abstract oils on canvas.

From An internationally recognized artist, Thomas George amazes us again with a new series of extraordinarily beautiful watercolors and, on a grander scale, a powerful grouping of abstract oils on canvas.

Mr. George’s work is based primarily on his observation of nature. Over several decades he has devoted his energy and talent to a search for beauty and it’s underlying structure in art and in life.

With a keen eye, a sympathetic awareness, and indisputable talent, the artist brings to the viewer a unique vision of our surroundings. Now, as we near the end of the 20th century, Tom’s intense involvement with nature continues. These most recent works provide an exciting challenge to the mind and to the emotions.

In discussing his most recent work in this ‘solo’ exhibition George comments on his technique and intent in creating the watercolors and canvases:

"From the beginning mountain landscape, the sea and the sky have been the primary sources for my abstract paintings. The color and structure in these work comes out of studies done directly from nature in places as diverse as Norway, China, and here in the United States. The canvases in this exhibition are a further step along a road fueled by a preoccupation with the natural landscape which for me lengthens and grows with the years".

"The floral watercolors in this show, however, represent something new for me. Their color is in the warm, high range. The forms are strongly defined and there is a dynamism in the painted space which is different from the oil paintings. It is easy to see that these watercolors are grounded in realism. Combined with this, however, is an abstract overlay built into the picture during the painting process this gives the finished work a quality which is at once beautiful and mysterious".

Thomas George was born in New York City in 1918, graduated from Dartmouth College in 1940, and studied in France and Italy after World War II. He has spent many years working in Europe, the Far East, North Africa and the United States, creating his unique interpretation of these surroundings in a variety of media. Of special interest to him have been the 19th and 20th century paintings of Turner, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse, ‘all artists who loved nature and who tried to express in paint the essential structure and light of nature’. Mr. George has gained international recognition as one of the foremost abstract painters of our time.

His work is included in many public and private collections, including The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and the Brooklyn Museums in New York; the Tate Gallery, London; The Library Of Congress, Washington, DC; the Museum of Fine Art, Lausanne, Switzerland; the Institute For Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ; the New Jersey State Museum, Trenton, NJ; The Princeton Art Museum; Chase Manhattan Bank; AT&T, Ford Motor Company, Chemical Bank, and countless others.