Tom Yost: A Modern Realist

Thunderhead
Tom Yost, Thunderhead, 2009, Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 in., Collection of Nan Vanandel

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Tom Yost: A Modern Realist

Don and Viriginia Davis Gallery

A PROVOCATIVE GROUPING OF OILS DISPLAYS YOST’S MASTERLY AND FRESH APPROACH TO MODERN DAY REALIST LANDSCAPE PAINTING.

This exhibit of 25 beautifully conceived and executed oil paintings highlights Tom Yost’s work created over the last 15 years. The subjects he chooses are from his beloved Litchfield Hills. Mr. Yost is not new to exhibiting at this Museum. The excellence of his paintings has won him first prize in the Annual Members Exhibition here at the New Britain Museum of American Art in both 2007 and 2009.

Over the years he has followed a tradition of painters from the early 20th century who were drawn by the beauty of the landscape and settled in Northwest Connecticut. Yost moved to Roxbury in 1999 and found the hills and valleys, woodlands and fields natural and ideal subjects for his realistic canvases.

Tom Yost is a nationally known expert in the conservation of fine oil paintings. He has had the luxury of ongoing exposure to the works of the great American and European painters of the late 19th century, including those masters of the Hudson River School. Yost has said, ”Seeing and literally touching the paintings of the greatest realist painters, I have been able to closely study the various techniques of paint application. In this respect the very best painters of the 19th century have been my mentors.”

No slave or mimic of technique, Yost has forged his own distinctive style of painting. With great focused strength and sharp edge of paint application executed alongside the subtlest and most gentle gradations of color and light, he creates the atmosphere of his beguiling compositions. The virtuosity of each painting invites the viewer to enter the work and experience a distinct moment in a precise location; the viewer can feel the very temperature and time of the day and perhaps even the breeze blowing over the landscape.