Tom Richardson, Painter and Psychoanalyst

A child said, What is the grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child…I do not know what it is any more than he.

It's Sunday, June 1st, slightly past noon. I've arrived at the studio of Tom Richardson. Greeting me warmly, Tom guides me to his living quarters where the flood of afternoon sunlight, tall ceilings, and pale walls create a natural gallery for his paintings. We easily begin to talk together about his art. After half an hour of discussion about Albert Ryder's “skies,” the Borgesian “other,” and Winnicott's “potential space,” all in the context of Tom's paintings, we realize that the tape recorder is not working and our conversation is lost. After several attempts to fix the recorder, we finally get it working and somewhat disheartened begin again. I want to recover what we've lost, but, true to form, Tom views everything we revisit afresh. He demonstrates the experiential nature of the creative process and the ways that chance and discovery, in art and in life, are intimately related. For Tom, reworking means allowing something to be destroyed and regenerated. Like a jazz improvisation, what happens next is what matters. You will be entering our conversation, as it is being reworked and rediscovered.

We have been discussing small, highly-textured paper postcards, 4” by 6, “in acrylic, that have become Tom's canvas. We ‘re viewing a postcard that's painted multifarious shades of ultramarine and purple with a sensuous flesh-like figure that appears to move with the play of light in the room.