1925 – 2013
E. Thor Carlson in his Studio
Visit the late E. Thor Carlson’s website of contemporary American art featuring images real and imaginary, drawings, paintings, graphics, sculpture, and tapestry since the 1940’s through 2007
www.EThorCarlson.com
Biography
E. Thor Carlson was born in Gardner, Massachusetts on September 18, 1925. He has drawn since childhood and began to paint in oils at the age of ten. His first murals were painted in 1942-43 for the Gardner High School auditorium. Upon graduation, he received a scholarship to attend the Art School of the Worcester Art Museum. His studies were interrupted by WWII and a hitch in the Navy as a Sea Bee in the South Pacific.
While overseas, he took his entrance exams for Yale’s School of Fine Arts. He began there in 1946. Before graduation, he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for a year’s study at the Academia in Florence to study fresco painting. Returning to Yale, he completed his fifth and final year. He graduated ‘In Primi Honoris’ with a BFA in painting (1951).
Thor Carlson has shown his work in major exhibits at the Worcester and Fitchburg Museums, at the gallery of the State Street Bank in Boston; also, Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church on Madison Avenue, New York City, and in Dublin, at Sandymont. President Aemon DeValera purchased one of his works for the Vice Royal Gallery.
His works are in many public and private collections both in the U.S.A. and in Europe and North Africa. In addition to painting and drawing, he has done tapestry weaving, stone and Starship Alpha Omega, his gilded wood sculpture which depicts many of the world’s alphabets.
He created 21 illustrations for Houghton & Mifflin’s first American version of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.
Han’s Woodland Scene
Morning Woods
Pines and Lady Slippers
Magic Forest
Spring Song
Wood by the Lake
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