About

Claire Hanson Tom 2023   

Claire Hanson Tom is a California artist who has exhibited her work since the 1990’s and continues developing her creative production.  She is a graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute.  In 2013 she illustrated the award-winning children’s book, “The Bubble Gum Princess” (Julie Gribble, New York Media Works).  She has worked with Magic Realist painter Gregory Gillespie, and with the American satirist, Jules Feiffer.

The body of her work broadly spans the field of 2-D media -- from oil and watercolor painting; to large format magic realist drawings; to scientific illustration and graphic narrative formats.  Her proficient use of a variety of media enables her to explore the nexus between the narrative qualities inherent in materials and the representation of form. 

Alongside her artwork, Claire has been an adjunct professor at Columbia College since 2007 teaching all subjects related to 2-D Art.  She also maintains an active collaboration with the Forestry and Natural Resources Department to promote the utilization of visual tools as a method of understanding the natural world. She has developed this connection through her Drawing in Nature and Nature Journaling summer courses at Bakers Station since 2014.

Claire Tom says:

“My painting concerns involve the importance of the dialogue between color upon the physical surface of the paper and the chimerical nature forms that are created out of my direct experience in real time.  In this, I attempt to embody life’s temporal dynamics within the atmospheres, artifacts and objects that we live in and around."