Tom Cleveland (Interdisciplinary Artist)

I’m an interdisciplinary artist creating sculptures and drawings as a way of understanding my relationship with life. My sculptures often depict emotions I have searched for internally, creating them in sometimes unusual configurations and imagining them in landscapes depicted in my drawings. I’ve recently completed a project I call Apology to Loneliness: an appreciation of where loneliness takes me in my work while living and working in my studio in Midtown Manhattan. I made many wax sculptures, photographed them, and began again, and sometimes merged them digitally with my pen and ink drawings into mixed media art.

I am very grateful to be included in Landscapes. Searching for loneliness was a personal adventure revealing, at times, the landscapes of my subconsciousness as I worked. I also traveled alone across the country with my work, visiting people and places I loved or had loved, giving my loneliness spaces to appear and disappear. Sometimes, loneliness and love merged as remembrances of love, joy and regret helped create my work. These are the words I wrote for the sculpture Guest and I think they might demonstrate the connection between the internal and external landscapes in my work

‘The Guest arrives balanced on a cloud and a gentle rain passes through the valley. If they knew I loved; would the stars care or the moon or sun. What about the birds chirping or the waves crashing on the beach, tints of blue reaching out to sea? A light breeze opens my eyes, I see red and orange flowers wave in the trees.’ T.C.