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 through coursework. 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-seven of his paintings have been selected for display at twenty-one 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.
Starting in January 2026 and running into 2027, a large exhibition of about 150 of Paquette’s tiny gouaches, along with some oil paintings, will be displayed at Erie Art Museum.
Paquette lives on the edge of the Allegheny National Forest outside Warren, Pennsylvania.
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
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2026-2027 Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA
2026 Groveland Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
2025 Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
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
2025 Crary Art Gallery, Warren, PA, “National Parks and Beyond”
2025 D. Wigmore Fine Arts, New York, NY, “The Timeless Adirondacks”
2022-25 US Embassy in Ottawa, Canada
2025 2024 The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA, “Art of the State”
2024 Minnesota Marine Art Museum, Winona, MN, “Fluid”
2024 Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA, “101st Annual”
2024 US Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia (two paintings selected)
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-seven of Paquette’s paintings were selected to be displayed either on loan or to become part of permanent collections. To see some of these paintings, see Art-in-Embassies page.
2025 selection for Monrovia, Liberia
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 selection for 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 selection for 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
Artist-in-Residence, Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation, Big Bay, MI
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 Club
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