How a Retired Engineer Found His Calling | Sit Down and Have a Tea Season 4, Episode 5

How a Retired Engineer Found His Calling Through Art

What happens when a global engineer trades oil rigs for oil paints? In this episode of Sit Down and Have a Tea from Wolfgang & Luke Art Gallery, host Syl Vander Park chats with painter Thomas Tucker, who began his art journey after retiring from a 38-year career with ExxonMobil. Tom shares how he went from never having picked up a brush to becoming a prolific artist with evolving styles, a deep love for trees, and a commitment to community. This conversation is full of heart, creativity, and insight into how the artistic spirit can emerge at any stage of life.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Tom spent 38 years working globally as an engineer before turning to art after retirement
• He discovered oil painting at a local art school in Great Falls, Virginia
• Studio tours helped him realize the value of connecting directly with people about art
• Many people are “latent creatives” waiting for the right moment to begin
• Plein air painting helped him embrace his identity as an artist
• Tom often works in evolving series, from autumn scenes to Japanese bamboo
• His process includes both acrylic and oil with layered depth and palette knife textures
• Feedback from his autistic son plays a key role in evaluating his work
• He is deeply involved in Legacy Farms and therapeutic horse programs
• His guiding life philosophy: “Do the right thing”

BEST MOMENTS:

00:01:34. “I stumbled upon this art school in Great Falls and started to take an oil painting class.”
00:02:21. “So many people are kind of what I call latent artists. Latent creative people.”
00:03:11. “You start looking, you go, wow, mine's not bad.”
00:04:15. “It’s nice to see the progression… this is what represented me right then and there.”
00:05:04. “If you look around my studio, you may have a hard time telling that the same artist produced all those paintings.”
00:06:26. “I paint anywhere down to 8x10. My bigger pieces are 44x60.”
00:08:28. “I’m not trying to replicate the photograph. I’m using that photograph for inspiration.”
00:14:50. “My son is 27 years old. He’s highly functioning autistic… he just tells me, dad, that one’s crashing.”
00:27:11. “Do the right thing, and you don’t have to ask yourself a lot about whether what you’re doing is right or wrong.”

Ad link: 🔗 Discover emerging artists at Wolfgang & Luke Art Gallery: https://www.wolfgangandluke.com

Transcript

0:35

I really love the aspens and the ginkgo trees, because I love the way the light filters and light breeze the pines. They're the wonderful creatures to lay underneath if you haven't done it before. Well, you know some pine trees when the wind's blowing slightly and wow, you get such a moment of peace and connection. You don't have to pay anything for it. Not on YouTube. It's not on Apple Music. In the land of the trees. Greetings and welcome to season four of Sit Down and Have a Tea podcast from the Wolfgang and Luke Art Gallery, now located in Sterling, Virginia. My name is Sylvana and I'm hoping that you really enjoy the episodes. Thank you so much for listening. It's nice coming off the studio tour, learning about kind of, you know, the traffic that you enjoyed and the activities that you did and people coming back. And how many years have you been doing studio tours? This is my fourth year. I used to be a visitor and now I'm a presenter, so I kind of switched over. Yeah, that's nice when that happens. Let's go over your background again. You know what you went to school for and then how you ended up being an artist. Yeah. So I went to school for engineering, and I'm a registered professional engineer. I spent about 38 years with Exxon Mobil transferring across the world, sometimes with my family, until I retired about seven years ago and decided to, like a lot of people, are retired. What am I going to do? In addition to working on different charities? I stumbled upon this art school in Great Falls, riding under my nose, and started to take an oil painting class. Took a couple more for the first time to go in there. You're a little bit uptight and never touched the brush in your life. There's other people in the class that have been doing this a long time, but you got to go in there and just let your juices flow and be creative. And I had people come to my studio tours and they paint on the canvas, and you can tell that they they're having a good time. They're like, and this, this whole experience of creating things is a great segue way for the school because you go like, hey, you might enjoy taking some classes. And what you invariably find is so many people are kind of what I call latent artist. There are latent creative people, and they have a lot of talent, but they just haven't developed and they're embarrassed, or they don't want to show other people because they don't think their work is up to scratch in reality, they can make some pretty good stuff and there's all different kinds of mediums. What do you think is kind of the crossover point when, as an artist, do you think you start to own it? Do you think it's with a number of hours or a number of canvases, or is it like for you, when did you start to say, hey, I'm an artist and I'm doing something unique? I think one awakening for me was I was taking a plant air class down in Old Town, and there's like 35 people in the class, and we all have a little instruction and we paint for a couple of hours, and then everybody shows their finished product. And, you know, you get up there and you're you're little plein air. It's next to 35 other people's plein air. And you start looking and go, wow, I'm or mine's not bad. And you know, all the paintings have something good in them. And you start to say to yourself, wow, I like doing this. It's fun. I'm maybe not replicating what I see with my eye, but I like the product. I like the composition. I like the color schemes, and other people are commenting in a positive fashion. So maybe maybe there's something to do here. Yeah, I would say that was, you know, one of the crossovers for me from purely being a student to say, okay, I'm going to show some of my brothers. I'm going to display public, and I'm just a prolific painter. I just like to paint a lot. But, you know, you can only build so much inventory. You've got to get some out the door. Yes, yes. That's the big conundrum, isn't it? Having enough room for everything, but still creating and not necessarily painting over all your same old canvases either, because it's nice to see the progression. I have one painting myself that I go, I want to fix it up. I said, no, I painted that in that time, and that's what represented me right then and there. And so I have to leave it alone. And it's nice to have those pieces right, that you can look over the years and you can say, yes, this is my you can see the visual journey. And I've had people like this, me can come and say, hello, Tom. You know, your work is getting better, it's changing. And then you kind of think back and go, oh, what's my work bad for? I find my work's evolving. You know, if you look around my studio, you may have a hard time telling that the same artist produced all those paintings, particularly if you have some older ones and you look backwards. But it's really good to see, though, is like, I kind of do things. Two years ago I did these autumn themes here, and then I did what I called Mystic Forest, which is right behind me. And then this year I got on to a big Japanese bamboo kick, right? And I started painting everything Japanese. What's nice to see is that people came in to the show and they said, hey, you had these really beautiful Aspen pictures last year. I want to get one. I'm like, oh, I only have one left. I sold the rest of them, and the one you have left is more likely than not the one you liked the least. Yeah. What's heartening is that you can tell somebody that that series is almost gone, and you hope you don't get to a series that nobody buys anything from. That's pretty exciting, though. It is that, you know, something is now no longer available and gaining in value. So yeah, some for more people in there. Yeah, yeah. What's a dream project that you have a painting project? I don't know. We talked about this a little bit last time, but I'd like to do a series of canvases that fit together, so maybe three together and, you know, have those of the same scene or the same theme, but, you know, they run together and they probably be rather large format. I paint anywhere down eight by ten. My bigger pieces are 44 by 60. I get 2 or 3 big canvases together and have a continuum. And then someday I've seen them on somebody's wall. If anybody's got a house that big, a wall that big, there might be some in Great Falls that big out over there, building absolute mansions. That's something that I'm kind of aspiring to. And hopefully either I'll find a commission or I'll just get motivated and do a couple and see what happens. Yeah. What is your process when you start painting? Do you do sketches? Photographs? I have a bunch of photographs that I call potential paintings that I've collected over time. And then I also have some little boxes of photographs. I mean, in files that are subject matter. So I have a Japanese file and I have a bridge file, and I have, Aspen file and, you know, and I'm starting to burn out of a subject. Let's take bamboo. I'm kind of burned out right now. I pick that those files up, and I start to thumb through them. You know, I've already established that I like some of those pictures. Otherwise I wouldn't have put them in that file. Now I'm going. Okay, I'm looking for motivation. What strikes me? What's going to strike me? And invariably you'll find 2 or 3 that in that moment you're kind of wanting to explore. And I save those. I print them off on a paper so I don't forget which one I was really looking at. Then I might, depending on what that picture looks like, I might go on, Matisse or like Canva, for instance, and start playing with colors and say, okay, I'm going to distort the heck out of this painting or this photograph and maybe get some ideas of how I might want to execute that. I'm not trying to replicate the photograph. I'm using that photograph for inspiration. Like this painting behind me. It's a hillside of trees. But you know, by the time I got done marinating them, you know, they almost like they're floating a little bit. So there, you know, you may not be on top of the hillside any longer, but that's where it started. And so I take that painting and my canvases. I start thinking about how I'm going to do the underpainting on this canvas. Am I going to prime it? I have two approaches. I usually use oil or I use acrylic and and million into the acrylic right now because it gives me so much freedom, all without using solvents to like make anything that make the under painting run and blend kind of thing you get from a watercolor. And I can also scratch in negative areas. Or, you know, if you catch that painting right before it dries, you can get your palette knife out and start scratching away. And I find that makes a really good foundation to come on top and put the oils on, because the oil will give me that depth, that more precision, more detail. And I will leave that underpainting a little bit more vague. And so all of a sudden I'm more into a depth situation. And those two mediums are complementing one another, hopefully. Okay, so you've got a combination then of acrylic and oil. A lot of those, the ones behind me are the same way, and I like to do impasto painting with my oils. So I use a lot of palette knife. I use a lot of thick layers. I'm not a big fan of wet on wet. Sometimes I segregate or by using the palette knife. It prevents that mixing that invariably happens on a canvas when you start to take wet on wet with a brush, or you start to make mud unless you segregated those areas, you know you come up with what I call chocolate milk. You call mud. You know, that color may look good on your living room wall, but doesn't look very good in the painting. I typically finish my paintings off after they dried with a semi-gloss or gloss. Morning and that helps protect the painting. And that also for me, it makes the acrylic pop a lot better because the acrylic tends to be a little duller, while the oils you know, they have a lot of luminosity. So that's kind of a process. Now, where do you get your ideas to abstract from nature and then mix the mediums up and is it just what you just naturally do? Or do you know we're you inspired by somebody, another artist? Well, I started on my oil journey. I used to paint, you know, whatever the instructor was painting while trying to match the instructor. I got a coffee table book one time in the mail. Didn't know who it was from, and it was about this artist, Erin Hanson, a bunch of her paintings. She's all on the West Coast. She has her own style. It's expressionistic, impressionistic, and I got really motivated and like, wow, I love the color combination this lady uses and I love her compositions. So I started to dissect some of her paintings. In fact, I bought one. And you know, being able to have a painting live in front of you, I can study the brush strokes. I could study the underpainting because she had a few videos out at the time, but they weren't. She was keeping a lot of secrets. Yeah. So you're getting a very condensed version. You're not getting the full recipe for her magic, you know, herbs and spices. Yeah. But anyway, I started following him. And, like, these paintings over here behind me. That's not her style, but I would say that came from her inspiration. Then I see other people's work and I just see things in nature and I'm like, oh my God, this look like, you know, if I'm kind of like me, you know, we experience, you go out on the golden, all right. Oh, you never know what color the sky is going to be, right? Oh, it could be purple. It could be pink. It can be all kinds of colors. That nature presents itself in the beautiful. Just to kind of flip over a little bit to the commercial side of things, when people pick up pieces from you, are they looking for the big size or are they looking for the small size? Are you noticing a trend at all? I'd say the medium sizes are more popular and there's a whole range of buyers. There's some buyers that are in there and they're like, I like your work, but I don't want to pay for it. Yeah. Therefore, they gravitate to smaller pieces and the smaller pieces are more flexible on the walls. I mean, even from my own house, I don't have many walls that will accommodate all four foot by five foot painting. Right? I just don't exist. And the few that I do have some other paintings all. Yeah. So I think kind of middle size is, not 16 by 20, but something bigger than that, 22 by 42 has been going really good lately, and 36 by 48. It's been going really good lately. There's a world economy of buyers. Yeah. No, I was just curious because you have a full range of size. So price point is one point accommodation of words that painting going to be. And if I have people that are undecided I say, hey, take the painting home, stick it on your wall and if you don't like it, bring it back. Yeah. This weekend I had somebody come. They bought the painting. They were going to cover a hole in their wall. They had a water leak. 30 minutes later, the lady shows back up and she's got the painting. She wants to swap it out. She says, hey, I'd like you to reproduce this painting, but in a slightly different dimension. She showed me the photograph, how we just missed it by Travis. Oh, okay. I'm. I'm trying to do that. We want to keep the same proportions because I'm going to make it a little lighter, or we're going to stretch it both ways to keep that proportionality. That's a cute story, actually. We talked about your people that you've learned the most from in your art journey. And you had talked about your son, you know, coming in and kind of letting you know, you know, what his thoughts are without any hesitation, which is very valuable. Oh, yeah. You know, my son is 27 years old. He's highly functioning autistic person. But one of his traits to the K pretty much black and white kind of person who tells it like it is, and at least from his perspective. And I often bring him up to the studio out here and ask him either a painting in progress or maybe halfway done, you know, what do you think of this? What do you think about the colors? What do you think about the composition? And, you know, he's a quick study. I know that because we've sat in art classes together. I've seen some of his nice work, and he just tells me, dad, that one's crashing a little bit. Oh, wow. I really like the way that one's harmonious. This painting right here is the kind of monotone blue and white one there. Yeah, well, that's an underpainting. Okay. That's how I would start off the painting. That's next to it. And I had that underpainting started and my son came out to the studio and I said, hey, what do you think about this? He said, oh, it's really good, I like it. I'm not starry. I'm I'm missing the beginning of it. You guys. No, no, dad, don't put any more on that. I love the way the monotone comes out and this thing's talking to me in a special way, and I'm like, okay. And there it is. It's on the wall of hasn't sold yet. That's an example of oh yeah, give me some guidance. And usually his advice is spot on. Do you find that for the autism. Because I was giving lessons one time and one of the old age homes in Great Falls, I was it was just a one on one with some kids. And the lady at the front said, oh, are you giving classes to autistic children? And and I said, no, I hadn't thought about that, you know, or nobody's nobody's approached me. It's just, you know, the people who have asked for the classes are not autistic or I haven't reached out, but what kind of activities does your son enjoy them? I was like, what? What? I don't think it's necessarily therapy for them. It's just it's a good environment kind of tailored to them. Right. People with autism that would you would say it's a whole spectrum, isn't it? And, you know, we work out, far from legacy farms. It's a nonprofit of northern county. And, you know, that's magic because, you know, we have 35 neurodiverse people out there between 16 and 37 years old, chronologically at least. And you know, they're out there in nature. They're interacting with one another, they're working with their hands, and they're doing all the things they're they're working on a business. They sell these flowers and, you know, so they're learning, like, how can I function in society, you know, and some of the kids work at Walgreens, some of them work at grocery stores, and they're learning that they're going like, wow, I can interact with people, I can create things, and I can be proud of my work. And all those things are happening out there. Legacy farms. So I can't say enough about that. Other activities that we engage in, we engage at Lift Me Up, which is a therapeutic horseback riding place here in Great Falls. It's amazing how the horses wow, they just they pick, ride up and people with neurodiverse conditions. They don't sometimes carry the baggage that perhaps I will carry from my experiences. They might be a lot more. Well, kind of a dichotomy on one end. They're very guarded on the other, and they're quite open, but they don't often pack as many paradigms as perhaps I've gathered in my lifetime. And the horses just connect right away. There's a calming, like you can feel the temperature go down, the blood pressure goes down, and they're communicating with these animals either up on the saddle or alongside maybe brushing the animal down or walking down the stalls or some other activity. So those are some of the things that we do that I would say my wife and I really like. And of course, my son loves more than anything to go down in the basement and get on the computer and be in his own world. Yeah, we all need to be in our own world sometimes. Yeah, yeah, now and at least some interaction with other people doing other things with your hands besides getting carpal tunnel syndrome. You know, it's pretty good. And the sense of achievement to go out is really great, too. And that's like why art can be so good as well. I work at the local art school here in Great Falls called the Arts Great Falls, and we host over 300 youth every year. And one of the selling points for youth in art. You kind of have different stages. Some youth, you're trying to go to a prestigious school and be an artist. Some years are there to have fun and socialize, and some youth are trying to grow their latent skills, but they don't have high aspirations. They're just trying to grow their skills. But what I tell the parents is, wow, would you rather have your young one on the computer or creating something that's artistic, really using their passion, letting things turn loose and art and multimedia is real. All that happen? Yeah. And it's just a great gift and it's so much better than when I grew up. I'm an old guy. We went out on the corner and waited for your fans to show up and do something outside. Now things have changed. Like so much social media and all the stuff. It's lonely out there, isn't it, to be waiting out on the corner for people to show up? You know something might fall on you before you get out of the way. Yeah, no. It's true. Getting out on the horses and getting out in the fresh air, socializing, learning new skills, putting your body into the works, the farm work and the horse and the art as well. I'll offer that. So that's great. And you all benefit from that. I'm just curious to see that. So you said your bamboo series is you said that might be petering out a little bit. Was that correct? I think I've done over a dozen in the last two months. I was prolific for just a little while, but I'm not a person with a long attention span to change up and get on a trail and see where it goes. I can always go back and paint bamboos again if I'm you can. I'm probably going to paint a couple of aspen trees after this weekend. I just like to wander, wandering the new stuff and I'm painting bamboo. Somebody asked me, hey, where are you going in your neighbor's yard and looking for their bamboo and whatever. And I'm like, well, I don't need to do that. Number one, I've made a lot of trips to to Japan and I'm a, I'm a Japan of all number two. Why don't you paint it a few bamboos? You don't need a picture anymore. You know, you're you're putting together what you've got to decide is how you want that composition to be. And am I going to draw them straight? Matter of three in there. Ten of them in there. Do I want my composition to be calming? Drawing my composition to evoke emotion. Stirring emotions, perhaps to more vibrant colors, more busy. Or I want to be a little bit more simple, more subtle with some details, colors, textures, light they emit and they bring up different emotions. And since I'm painting trees and landscapes, you don't get all the facial emotion. All the artists through the ages that have depicted human emotion through portraiture and through paintings of people, you know, it's interesting. Do you see the personality in the individual trees, or is it the whole more so? Oh, I see both mean the trees, I think, talk to each other. And I think they fascinate me because you feel like, wow, how did the earth get all these beautiful creations? And the trees are so beautiful. Throughout the seasons and throughout the day. And of course, like many artists, I really favor the shadows and light the morning and evening. If you're going to take photography, you're going to get really motivated by something you see outside. The golden hours are really, really motivational to me. You're really going to see me go out on a cloudy day and take a lot of photographs, because I just find them kind of monotonous and I don't get the emotion. Think about bamboo, and if you've been in a bamboo grove and it's slightly windy and you hear all these pieces hitting together, webbing next to each other and squeaking, rustling in the wind, and almost like a symphony that's happening out there in nature. And you're right in the middle of it all. Yeah, I referee soccer on occasion, and it's just nice to be out there, especially when I'm on the field and there's trees all around and there's a break in the game. For whatever reason. He just take a look up and you just see everything moving, especially really, really tall trees and just the slow sway up there. And it's mesmerizing. I agree, I love the fact that you are saying, okay, what am I going to make today? You know, like what's today going to be all about? What's today's piece going to be all about? And you're making a deliberate decision on what the trees are going to say that day to you and to everybody else, which is pretty cool. And they all speak differently. I really love the aspens and the ginkgo trees, because I love the way the light twittered and the light breeze, the pines, you know, they're the wonderful creatures to lay underneath when there's a breeze blowing. If you haven't done it before long, lion or some pine trees when the wind's blowing slightly and wow, you get such a moment of peace and connection that occurs and you don't have to pay anything for. It's not on YouTube, it's not on Apple Music. In this cartoon land of the trees, very nice. Well, it's been really nice to chat with you again. It's really nice to chat with other people about experiences, about my family, about things that I'm doing right now, and hopefully other people can experience some of those things or, you know, teach me a few things to experience myself. Yeah. The last time when we spoke, you are kind of Mr. Great Falls in a way, you know, because you're involved in different areas, you know, and valuable touch points and community, really to what Great Falls is with the range and arts of Great Falls. And, you know, you're involved in all these charities as much. And I know you've been generous with fundraising for Great Falls Studios in the past and stuff like that. So we all have more or less to give when you give to causes that you're familiar with, that impact you personally or that have impact the people you love either time or gifts, in-kind or money, all those things flow a lot better when you're connected in some way, and I hope more people in Great Falls and around Northern Virginia get the chance to experience some of the gifts that we have out there that they can benefit from. And hopefully they can help others benefit from those as well. And just kind of, you know, looking at your life to date, you know, and you're still you call yourself old, but you've got years ahead of you to still do stuff. But, you know, if you're talking to an 18 year old or something like that, they were looking to you for advice, you know, life advice kind of thing. What would you say generally that I've said to employees, would I say to my own family is do the right thing and you don't have to ask yourself a lot about whether what you're doing is right or wrong. One time I had a boss, and you know, there's a lot of great things in life. I'm not going to kid you that I'm going, like I said to this, boss, how do I know if I'm doing the right thing? You said, give yourself a ten second test, and if you can't say to yourself, this is right within 10s, chances are you might not ought to be doing that. And you know, doing the right thing is doing the right thing by others is following the golden rule. It's being honest with other people, and it's trying to do your best. My best may not be as good as somebody else's best, but it's the best I got and I can turn back and look myself in the mirror and say, I did the best I could, and it may not have worked out whatever that situation was, or a job or a project that you were working on. But, you know, you said I did the best I could feel. That's the advice I would give a young person. It may sound quaint, corny, but I truly believe instead of all. And would you say that's your legacy as well, doing the right thing? No. Yeah. I think my legacy is, you know, kind of the spectrum of doing some things I'm not so proud of and doing a lot of things I'm proud of and then some in between years. So no, by no means. You got the wrong guy here. Change who it is not. Yeah. It's. Not it's going to be. You know, me and Saint Pete are going to have to have a little discussion and negotiation. Well, they always say that the Saints always have a good sense of humor. So good sense of humility. So there you go. You never know. And then. Well, thank you again. And we'll look forward to seeing where your art evolves. You've got art currently on display at the old brogue. And that will be, I believe you're changing out also from November to be there forever in December so people can come and see you by the time that this rolls out to, so people can come and see your work at Old Brogan and reach you, what's the best way to reach you? Is it Instagram to look at our website in the best way to contact me is probably my email, but I post all my new stuff on Instagram, okay, and I'll put in the notes. I'm going to be putting your Instagram there. It's Thomas Tucker dot 500 115. That's your artist account. Awesome. Awesome. Okay thanks again Hazel. Have a nice day. Thanks for sitting down and having a tea with us today. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow, sit down and have a tea wherever you get your podcasts to explore more art and connect with the community, visit us at Wolfgang and Loop Gqom or stop by the Gallery in Sterling, Virginia. Until next time, keep discovering. Keep creating, and keep sharing the art that moves you.