Salmagundi Palettes | Artist Member Spotlight | 2025 | April | Thomas W Schaller
Thomas W. Schaller is an internationally-acclaimed artist, architect, and author based in NYC. In 2024 he was named the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award in Fine Arts by the Institute of Classical Art and Architecture, winner of a 2024 Raphael Award, winner of the Ogden Pleissner Award by both the American Watercolor Society and the Salmagundi Art Club, a winner in the 2024 ARC Salon Competition, and First Place Award winner in Watercolour International 2024.
A two-time winner of the prestigious Hugh Ferriss Memorial Prize, he is also the author of three books, including the AIA award-winning Architecture in Watercolor. His latest, Architect of Light is published by Penguin. His best-selling DVD, The Power of Design is published by Streamline Media. And his interactive online mentorship program “Design and the Power of Imagination” is hosted by Terracotta LLC. Tom is a Signature Member of many arts groups around the world and is represented by Gallery 71 in New York City.
Q&A with Artist Thomas W. Schaller
Please tell us how you first started painting, possibly at a young age. Did you always have a desire for drawing and painting? Were you encouraged by members of your family to accomplish paintings or other artistic skills?
Like many children I expect, I was always searching for some means of self-knowledge and self-expression. And I discovered very early on that non-verbal methods worked much better for me. So I have been drawing for as long as I can remember. It has always been the best way I could even hope to cast a net of order around the chaos of the world I saw around me. If I was happy – I wanted to draw. If I was upset – I wanted to draw. If I was lonely, or overwhelmed, or when I just needed to try to figure something out – I wanted to draw, and soon enough, to paint. Somehow, that made everything better. It still does.
I grew up in a large, conservative family on a farm in very rural Ohio. Any sort of artistic, intellectual, or creative pursuit was definitely not-encouraged. But my grandmother noticed my love of art and gave me a book on the lives of American artists. I couldn’t count the hours spent obsessing over the works of Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Edward Hopper, Winslow Homer and so many others. But as enamored as I was of their paintings, I was equally intrigued by the idea of anyone living a life as an artist – especially in a place like New York City. This dream seemed impossibly remote and preposterous but equally unforgettable. And at the age of seven, I vowed to myself – and to my bemused and incredulous parents – that when I grew up, I would be an artist and live in New York City. They laughed, but that crazy dream kept me going all my life.
All I knew for sure back then was that when I was making art, windows onto new worlds opened to me. I could see and imagine and feel things unavailable to me in any other way. And over the years, that’s never changed.
How did you first start showing your artwork? Were you exhibiting at a young age, perhaps your years at school? Did you decide later on to pursue an artistic career and why did you choose watercolor as your major medium?
I continued to draw, and over time, I began to notice themes develop in my subject matter. Time and again, I was impelled to draw imaginary cities – on mountaintops, under the sea, in the remoteness of outer space. And as I entered my teen years, I began to feel that maybe I was destined to become an architect. And gradually, my interest in the subject grew. Eventually – while I majored in both fine art and architecture at university – I began to believe that I had to choose one path over the other. In time, I’d come to understand that there my another way.
After my degree and internship in Boston, I went on to become a registered architect. Interestingly, it was in architecture school, not in my art classes, that I was first introduced to watercolor. I could not yet articulate why, but the medium spoke to me in a way that no other ever has.
It was at this point that I moved to New York City. I was nearly 30 and saw my life heading in a direction I was not certain I wanted it to go. In my first few months of life in the Big City, I produced a series of large scale abstract acrylic paintings and – certain that major success as an artist would soon be mine – showed them to many of the premier galleries around town. I did not realize that the word “No” could take so many forms.
Desperate to make some kind of living as an artist, I began to interview at galleries, graphic design forms, advertising agencies, anyplace where I thought I could earn a wage. Nothing worked. But one day, an agent at Grey Advertising gave me a piece of invaluable advice. He looked though my portfolio and after assuring me that he had no work to offer, said; “Who are you? What do you most want to do? Your portfolio is a disaster – filled with pencil work, pen and ink, acrylic, oils, watercolor, etc. Go home, decide on a direction, and throw out everything else.”
I was offended but he was 100% right. After much thought, I determined that watercolors – primarily of urban environments – were what I most loved to do. They blended my love of architecture (the rational world) with my passion for painting ( the emotional world). I worked up a new portfolio of half a dozen watercolors and began to show them at architectural firms.
Within a year, I opened my own business producing watercolors of imagined and proposed architecture for virtually all the world’s most prestigious design firms. It blossomed into a 25-year career that was completely unexpected, but lucrative, and generally satisfying as well.
Still, while I was doing well, I knew something was missing. The work I did was generally commercial and centered – at least in part – around the ideas and visions of others. I continued to paint my own work, but I assumed those would never see the light of day
At what point did you begin to exhibit in galleries, enter exhibitions, and start to market your work?
In time, I came to better understand my aesthetic . I didn’t have to chose between art and architecture – there was no difference. My interest in architecture was always less about buildings as objects than about buildings as “containers”. It was about the people whose lives, stories, dreams, and memories were contained in – or formed by – those structures. And the medium of watercolor – with it’s transparent quality of layered identity – was ideal for me to try to tell those stories.
But not until I was in my fifties did I decide to reach for something more. I took a class with the great watercolor artist Joseph Zbukvic who – after listening to me complain about being unfulfilled as an artist – gave me another invaluable piece of advice. “Just paint – all the rest will take care of itself”. Rarely does a day go by that I am not reminded of the truth in that simple statement. Focus on what you love. Everything else is a detail.
And it was not until about 2010 that I finally decided to begin to get serious about my artwork. I entered the AWS exhibition held annually at the Salmagundi Club. I was rejected, but that turned out to be a good thing. I always assumed that I could not handle inevitable rejection, but I was wrong. It didn’t make me want to stop painting as I had feared. It made me want to paint better. I was accepted the following year and was off and running. I began to enter every exhibition and competition I could. I set up a website. I painted non-stop. I got better, and I made the conscious decision to define myself as an “artist”. This has made all the difference.
Did you choose the galleries and art organizations based on their their image in the art world such as contemporary realism? Did you choose the galleries that you believed would blend with their other artists but would give you individuality?
For several years, I participated in exhibitions aimed only at watercolor or water media artists. In time however, I began to understand how marginalized watercolor can be; how some gallerists and collectors tend to think of it as second class or “less than”.
So I began to enter competitions and approach clubs and galleries that were not media-specific. I believe that watercolor is as valid a media as any other and have been determined to do what I can to prove that. In my current NYC gallery, my work hangs shoulder to shoulder with all other types of work and it is priced accordingly, It is thought of as simply “painting”, not “watercolor painting”.
How do you market your art? In addition to galleries, do you also maintain your website and keep it current? Do you also post your art and announcements on Social Media? Do you have a developed clientele list where you reach out on a timely basis?
My gallery promotes my work, as does my website host. But as artists, we also need to be our own best advocates, so I market my work in a website-based newsletter, and in my own publications. I am working now on publishing my fourth book.
In addition, I post regular updates on Social Media. Instagram, Facebook, and now YouTube have been invaluable. I have been fortunate to gain a loyal following and I do my utmost to remain in touch and to interact personally with as many people as I can.
In addition, to being a member of Salmagundi, are you a member of other art organizations? Tell us why you joined Salmagundi and how your membership has benefited you.
High-profile art clubs like the Salmagundi and the California Art Club are a fantastic conduit to both collectors and a supportive community of fellow artists. The Salmagundi Club especially feels like a kind of creative home. It has such amazing resources, wide-ranging activities, exciting exhibitions, etc. Membership has improved and enhanced my life personally and professionally in countless ways.
To build your income, do you also achieve a calendar of workshops? If so, are they on sight or virtual? What are your choices for locations with your workshops?
A few years ago, I began teaching as a way to supplement my income. But in time, I began to realize that teaching had other benefits. I enjoy the society of other artists and the rare privilege I have had to be able to travel the world. The world of art has granted me access to places I could dream about in my earlier life.
Each year, I teach in Italy for a week or more and hold a live class in New York City and several other venues. But during the pandemic, I began tentatively to teach online. It has been a revelation. Platformed by the company Terracotta, I have an online fine art mentorship program and a separate program on drawing. We now have many hundreds of students – far more than I could reach in my live classes.
But as importantly, teaching has helped me become a better painter. As visual artists, we tend to work alone, and often in a self-imposed silence. Teaching forces me to state out loud and for the record what I believe and why. So I learn to teach myself. It challenges me to push my abilities in the directions I most wish to go and to be open to new directions I could not have imagined before.
Tell us about your promotional relationship with Streamline Publications, or other art magazines, and how this exposure benefits your business.
Streamline Media is a tireless advocate for the arts, and for working artists. Over the years, they have produced a series of DVDs of my painting process and have featured me countless times in their various publications. And through their live and online events, have helped to promote me – and many of us – to corners of the earth we could never reach alone. Each year, the “Plein Air Live” and “Watercolor Live” events are attended by many thousands of aspiring painters, collectors, and fellow artists.
Eric Rhodes is a friend to so many of us and his success as a promoter of the arts and of artists can in large part be attributed to the fact that he is a gifted working artist himself. He understands our lives and our struggles because he is one of us.