Bio


Thomas Paquette has been a full-time painter since receiving his MFA degree in Painting in 1988. Widely collected, his works comprised more than sixty solo exhibitions in museums and prominent galleries in New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Washington, DC, and smaller cities around the country.

Paquette was raised in Minneapolis, and dropped out of college art studies in that city midway through his first year, intent on experiencing the world firsthand rather than sol through received studies. For swaths of the next six years, he explored North America by hitchhiking and hopping freight trains that carried him tens of thousands of miles back and forth to the edges of the continent and as far from home as Alaska, where the rails and highways end.

Returning occasionally to conventional education at four undergraduate institutions, he graduated summa cum laude with a BFA degree in Painting from Bemidji State University in 1985, and earned an MFA on a full fellowship from Southern Illinois University three years later. He was then awarded a three-year residency-fellowship in Miami Beach, Florida, through the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts (NFAA). Among other institutions, he was an artist-in-residence at Acadia, Yosemite, and Rocky Mountain national parks, Aegean Arts and Cultural Exchange (Greece), and the American Academy in Rome.

A solo traveling exhibition of his paintings, America’s River Re-Explored: Paintings of the Mississippi from Source to Gulf, was exhibited at three museums along the Mississippi River in 2018-2019: Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Watermark Art Center, and Dubuque Museum of Art.

In 2014-2015, another solo exhibition, On Nature’s Terms, traveled to Wildling Art Museum (CA), St. Bonaventure Quick Center for the Arts (NY), and Evansville Museum (IN). Other one-museum exhibitions include Erie Art Museum, Georgia Museum of Art, The Rockwell Museum, and Westmoreland Museum of American Art.

Forty-one of his paintings have been selected for display at twenty U.S. embassies on five continents, including in the cities of Athens, Brussels (NATO permanent collection), Moscow, Ottawa, Rome, Santiago, St. Petersburg, Taipei, and Vienna. He has given talks at museums and universities in the U.S., Greece, Wales, and England.

Among several commissions completed for public and private entities, the largest were for the state of Minnesota (7 feet by 32 feet in length, and another 11 feet long), the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis (a cycle of four works measuring 7 feet by 6 feet each) and a recent triptych measuring 5 feet by 10 feet for an international philanthropic organization.

His works are included in numerous private, corporate, museum and state collections, and have been featured in numerous publications.
Paquette lives on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest outside Warren, Pennsylvania.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2023   Meibohm Fine Arts, East Aurora, NY
2022   Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2021   Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
2020   James K. Schmidt Gallery, Principia College, Elsah, IL
2020   Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
2019   Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2019   Tri-County Arts Council, (duo) Olean, NY
2019   Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA
2018   Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona, MN
2018   Watermark Art Center, Bemidji, MN
2016   Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
2016   Thiel College, Greenville, PA
2015   Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2015   Rockwell Museum, Corning, NY
2015   Evansville Museum of Art, Evansville, IN
2014   Quick Center for the Arts, St. Bonaventure, NY
2014   Wildling Art Museum, Solvang, CA
2013   Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2012   Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
2011   Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME
2011   Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
2010   Roger Tory Peterson Institute, Jamestown, NY
2010   Windham Fine Art, Windham, NY
2009   Dowling Walsh Gallery, Rockland, ME
2008   Minnetonka Center for the Arts, Wayzata, MN
2008   Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA
2008   Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2007   Hoyt Institute of Fine Art, New Castle, PA
2007   Mercyhurst College, Erie, PA
2006   Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
2005   Somerville Manning Gallery, Greenville, DE
2005   Jameson Gallery, Portland, ME
2004   Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA
2003   Jameson Gallery, Portland, ME
2003   Flanders Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, MN
2002   Bennington Center for the Arts, Bennington, VT
2001   Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA
2001   Aucocisco Gallery, Portland, ME
2000   Flanders Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, MN
2000   Southern Illinois University Museum, Edwardsville, IL
2000   American Academy in Rome, Italy (studio exhibition)
1998   Flanders Contemporary Art, Minneapolis, MN
1997   Maine State Capitol, Augusta, ME
1996   Fischbach Gallery, New York, NY
1994   Lydon Fine Art, Chicago, IL
1994   Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockport, ME
1993   University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME

Selected Group Exhibitions

2022-25   US Embassy in Ottawa, Canada
2023   Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, “Concerning the Spiritual in Landscape”
2023   Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis, MN, “Present”
2022   The Brinton Museum, Big Horn, WY, “The Brinton 101”
2022   The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH, “86th Annual MidYear Exhibition”
2021   Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA, “98th Annual”
2021   Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, “Selected Works”
2022   The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, OH, “85th Annual MidYear Exhibition”
2020   The Brinton Museum, Big Horn, WY, “The Brinton 101”
2020   EVOKE Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM, “Here and There”
2019   Meibohm Fine Arts, East Aurora, NY, “Nocturnes”
2018   US Embassy Brussels NATO (permanent collection)
2018   Wildling Art Museum, Solvang, CA
2017   Strohl Art Center, Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY, “The American Landscape”
2017   US Embassy in Vilnius, Latvia
2017   The Brinton Museum, Big Horn, WY
2016   New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, CT, “As We See It: The Gail and Ernst von Metzsch Collection”
2016   The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA, “Art of the State”
2016   Sordoni Art Gallery, Wilkes University, Wilkes Barre, PA, “Upstream and Down: the Susquehanna”
2015   U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia
2014   Arcadia Contemporary, New York, New York, “Summer Selections”
2012   U.S. Embassy in Libreville, Gabon
2012   U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan
2012   U.S. Embassy in Georgetown, Guyana
2011   Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona, MN, “The Raging Red and the Mighty Mississippi”
2010   U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece
2009   D. Wigmore Fine Arts, New York, NY, “Adirondack Art Today”
2009   U.S. Embassy in Brazzaville, Congo
2008   Roberson Museum
, Binghamton, NY, “Visions of the Susquehanna” Exhibition traveled:

            Governor’s Residence, Harrisburg, PA, 2007;
            Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, Hagerstown, MD, 2007;
            Lancaster Museum of Art, Lancaster, PA, 2006;
            Susquehanna Art Museum, Harrisburg, PA, 2006
2007   Crary Art Gallery, Warren, PA, “Picturing Wilderness”
2007   Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, “American Arcadia”
2007   U.S. Embassy in San Salvador, El Salvador
2005   Seton Hill University,
Greensburg, PA, “Two Artists/Multiple Views” (two-artist show)

2005   U.S. Embassy in Athens, Greece
2004   Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA “Along the Lincoln Highway”
2003   The American Institute, Taipei, Taiwan
2003   U.S. Embassy in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
2002   Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul, MN, “Defining a Collection: Recent Art Acquisitions”
2002   Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC, “Recent Acquisitions”
2002   U.S. Embassy in St. Petersburg, Russia, “Natural America”
2002   U.S. Embassy (OSCE) in Vienna, Austria
2000   U.S. Embassy in Rome, Italy (7 paintings selected)
1999   Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME, “The Joy of Collecting Art in Maine”
1999   L.C. Bates Museum, Hinckley, ME, “Looking at Katahdin”
1998   U.S. Embassy in Santiago, Chile
1998   Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, ME, “The History of Oil Sketching in Maine”
1997   Beach Museum of Art, Manhattan, KS (and traveling), “Buildings and Landscapes”
1995   U.S. Embassy in N’Djmena, Chad
1991   Bass Museum of Art , Miami Beach, FL, “Three Fellows”
            (National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts fellowship recipients)
1990   Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL “Art in Miami Collections”
1990   Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach, FL “Contemporaries in our Midst”
            (Fellows of the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts)

Art in Embassies Program / Department of State

Curators at the Department of State work with ambassadors to select art for installation at U.S embassies and ambassadors’ residences around the world. Below are twenty-one diplomatic facilities for which forty-one of Paquette’s paintings were selected to be displayed either on loan or as part of dedicated permanent collections. To see some of these paintings, see Art-in-Embassies page.

2022 – 2025   Ottawa, Canada
2018 – permanent   Brussels NATO
2016-2020   Vilnius, Lithuania
2015-2016   Moscow, Russia
2012 – permanent   Libreville, Gabon
2011 – 2014   Amman, Jordan
2011 – 2015   Georgetown, Guyana
2010 – 2012   Athens, Greece
2008 – 2011   Brazzaville

2007 – 2009   San Salvador
2006  
Havana, Cuba

2005 – 2008   Athens, Greece
2003 – 2005  
Phnom Penh, Cambodia

2002 – 2006   Taipei, Taiwan
2001 – 2005   Vienna, Austria
2001 – 2005   St. Petersburg, Russia
2001   Rome, Italy
1998 – 2001   Santiago, Chile
1999 – 2001   Riga, Latvia
1994 – 2000  
N’Djamena, Chad

Education

Master of Fine Arts – Southern Illinois University, Painting, 1988 full Graduate Fellowship
Bachelor of Fine Arts – Bemidji State University, Painting, 1985 summa cum laude

Fellowships • Residencies • Awards

Artist-in-Residence, Acadia National Park, Bar Harbor, ME
Visiting Artist Residency, American Academy in Rome, Italy
Artist Residency, Blue Mountain Center, Blue Mountain Lake, NY
Travel Grant, John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund, Cambridge, ME
Artist Residency, Robert M. MacNamara Foundation, Westport Island, ME
Shep Forest Fellowship, Millay Colony for the Arts, Austerlitz, NY
Fellowship and Residency, National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, Miami Beach, FL
Special Opportunity Stipend, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
Visiting Artist, Plymouth University, Exeter, England
Artist-in-Residence, Rocky Mountain National Park, Estes Park, CO
Visiting Artist, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL

Full Graduate Fellowship, Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL
American Artists Abroad, U.S. Department of State and U.S. Embassy in Athens
Visiting Artist, University of Wales, Cardiff, Wales
Artist Residency, USM/Aegean Arts and Cultural Exchange, Greece
Artist-in-Residence, Yosemite National Park, Yosemite, CA

Collections • Commissions

Acadia National Park Museum
Adirondack Museum

Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp
Banknorth
Beach Museum of Art
The Brinton Museum
L.L. Bean
Cargill Philanthopies
Carlson School of Management

Cigna Museum
Colby College Art Museum
Collier Shannon Scott
Commerce Bancshares
Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers
Cunard Line – Queen Mary II Art Collection
Dubuque Museum of Art
Erie Art Museum
Erie Insurance
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis
Fleet BankBoston
Fidelity Investments
Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum
Georgia Museum of Art
Ministry of Economics, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Minnesota Marine Art Museum
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
Minnesota Historical Society
Mint Museum of Art
Museum of Modern Art / Franklin Furnace Art Book Collection
National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts
New Britain Museum of American Art
Pennsylvania Lumbermens Mutual Insurance
Portland Museum of Art
The Principia Collection
The Rockwell Museum
Roger Tory Peterson Institute
St Bonaventure University Art Collection
Smith Barney Morgan Stanley
Southern Illinois University Museum
SPX Corporation
State of Maine Percent-for-Art collections
State of Minnesota Percent-for-Art collections
State of Montana Percent-for-Art collection
Susquehanna National Heritage Area
Thomson Financial
UNUM
U.S. Department of State
U.S.T.
United States Department of State, Art in Embassies Program
Wells Fargo
Westmoreland Museum of American Art
Western Illinois University Museum
Yosemite National Park Museum

Larger commissions

Below is a list of the largest commissioned works.
Some commissioned works can be seen at this link.

Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies – triptych canvases totaling 5 x 10 feet
Cunard Line Queen Mary 2 and Holland America Statendam – various sizes of larger canvases
Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Minneapolis, MN – Four canvas paintings, 7 by 5.5 foot each
Central Lakes College, Brainerd, MN – 7.5 by 32 foot canvas painting
Central Lakes College, Brainerd, MN – 4 x 8 foot canvas painting
Centennial State Office Building, St. Paul, MN – 5 x 11 foot canvas painting

Selected Lectures

2020   Principia College, Elsah, IL
2020   Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL
2019   Dubuque Museum of Art, Dubuque, IA
2018   Watermark Art Center, Bemidji, MN
2018   Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona, MN
2017   Wild America Nature Festival, Panama Rocks, NY
2015   International Center for Watercolor, Burchfield Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY
2015   Rockwell Museum, Corning, NY
2015   Evansville Museum, Evansville, IN
2014   Quick Center for the Arts, St. Bonaventure, NY
2014   University Club of Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA
2014   Wildling Art Museum, Solvang, CA
2012   Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
2008   Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Greensburg, PA
2008   St. Vincent College, Latrobe, PA
2008   Minnetonka Center for the Arts, Wayzata, MN
2007   Mercyhurst College, Erie, PA
2007   Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, Edinboro, PA
2006   Veria Public Library, Veria, Greece
2006   American University, Athens, Greece
2004   Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA
2001   Georgia Museum of Art, Athens, GA
1999   Plymouth University, Exeter, England
1999   University of Wales, Cardiff, Wales
1999   Glamorgan Centre for Art, Cardiff, Wales
1993   University of Southern Maine, Portland, ME
1990   Miami Dade College, Miami, FL