| Notes |
- The following brief biography is from the website Tigertail Virtual Museum (24 Nov 2008):
Born and raised until age seven in Brooklyn, New York and then in Bellport, Long Island in upper middle class surroundings. His mother is of Cuban/Spanish extraction; his father is Anglo-American. The family is a church going Episcopalian family.
In his early teens George takes art lessons from the painter Malcolm Frazier, a friend of his mother, and then he attends Phillips Academy, a prep school, in Andover, Mass. in preparation for college. He doesn't really want to go to college -- he wants to go to art school, but the family insists on a college education.
He goes to Harvard University where he studies English Literature, but spends much of his time doing what he wants to do: painting with his roommate, Francis Faust.
At the beginning of the Second World War his family expects him to enlist in the services, so he does. During boot camp he is found to be medically unfit and discharged with ulcerative colitis. He is subsequently drafted, and again he is found medically unqualified.
During the war he studies at the Art Students League in New York City, and in 1943 with Reginald Marsh. He also studies with Kenneth Hayes Miller and Harry Sternberg. Tooker stops attending church when he begins art school. However religion remains a major influence on his art.
In 1946, he becomes both the student and a close friend of Paul Cadmus. Cadmus encourages Tooker to work with tempera rather than the transparent wash technique taught by Marsh.
Tooker adopts a method of using egg yolk thickened slightly with water and then adding powdered pigment, a medium that is quick drying, tedious to apply, and hard to change once applied.
In 1949 he travels for several months in France and Italy with Paul Cadmus looking at art.
In the early 50s he moves to New York; there Tooker finds his life partner, another artist -- William Christopher (1924-1974). Bill and George share a loft in Chelsea; in 1953 after a fire in an adjoining lumber yard, they move to Brooklyn Heights and renovate a brownstone. They support themselves by making and selling furniture.
In 1951 George has his first one-man exhibition at the Edwin Hewitt Gallery in New York .
In 1960, George and his life partner, Bill Christopher, move to Vermont. They buy a barn in White River Junction and move it to their home site in Hartland. They cut the Barn down quite a bit and then add on additional rooms.
In the 60s Bill teaches in the fine arts department of Dartmouth University. George teaches at the Art Students League in New York. Both come to Vermont on weekends. They commute mostly by rail.
In 1968 they decide to live half a year in Malaga, Spain and half a year in Vermont. Bill finds the winters in Vermont difficult. So he stops teaching at Dartmouth and they both go to Spain for the winters. They plan to move there permanently.
In 1973 Bill Christopher dies in Spain. George returns to the Vermont house. In succeeding years he occasionally visits their place in Spain. But eventually, he gives up going to Spain at all. His paintings are now focused more on introspection and have lost much of the sexual tension of his work in the forties and the social commentary of his work in the fifties.
The years after Bill's death he finds difficult and leave him in emotional turmoil. He response he turns, in part, to the Catholic church, and he converts from Episcopalian to Roman Catholic.
He paints pictures for the St. Francis of Assisi Church in Windsor, Vermont. These include a series for the stations of the cross and an altarpiece .
George Tooker still lives and works in rural Vermont.
|
1920 - 2011 (90 years)
[1, 6] 