Ron Tomlinson

American, (1945–2018)
Tomlinson grew up in Fort Worth during the 1950s, where he had the good fortune to take art classes at the Fort Worth Children’s Museum, forerunner of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, then located in a house on Summit Avenue. The classes were taught by members of the Fort Worth Circle, an eclectic group of artists that included Bill Bomar, Dickson and Flora Reeder, and Bror Utter. Utter became Tomlinson’s first mentor, encouraging the young painter to pursue his artistic education. Tomlinson’s parents supported his interest in art — his mother whole-heartedly, his military father less so. In 1962, Ron left Fort Worth to study painting at Boston University without (as he often said) any intention of returning. His studies took him to New York City, where he studied with the painter Philip Pearlstein, and to the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. During this time, he married Sally Shaw, another Fort Worthian, one whom he had known since fourth grade. Tomlinson was well-connected to the New York arts scene of the 1960s, thanks to Pearlstein and Pearlstein’s good friend Andy Warhol. Tomlinson seemed on the verge of “making it” as an artist (“whatever that means,” he’d say flippantly) when Ron and Sally decided to leave New York and go live in the jungle. A visit back to Fort Worth to meet with the local draft board marked a turning point for Ron, who registered as a conscientious objector. Though he had been well-positioned to make his mark in the New York art scene, he left the mainland to teach art in the Virgin Islands (a service requirement of his C.O. status) before moving on to the Quaker community of Monteverde in Costa Rica. Ron and Sally spent 10 years in the rainforest, where they built a house, taught art and English, and started a family. As much as they loved their home in Monteverde, Ron and Sally wanted their two young daughters to be able to go to museums, hear a symphony, and to know more about the wider world than they could learn in their small mountain community of expats. Returning to Fort Worth was intended to be a stopgap until they could decide where to settle. Something had changed, though, both for Ron and Sally, and for Fort Worth. Fort Worth had become more than just a good place to raise a family — it was a good place to paint. Though Ron would travel frequently back to New York to work, he came to love the town he had once been so ready to leave.

Sally Tomlinson became a much-loved teacher of languages at William James Middle School until her death in 2015. Ron continued to teach painting. As artist-in-residence at Texas Wesleyan University, with the Reeder School, and later with Imagination Celebration, he took a marked joy in exposing young people to art and ideas, especially those whose upbringings had never brought them into contact with the great art that was available to them — often for free — in their own hometown. It broke his heart, he said, knowing that there were kids in Fort Worth who had never been to our museums. Ron showed the world to his students. He compared the feeling he got as a teacher watching something click for a student to the feeling he’d get when he stepped back from a painting he was working on and knew that it was good. Ron Tomlinson’s painting, firmly grounded in history and analysis while dancing across varieties of subject matter and technique, garnered the respect of critics and patrons at home and abroad. But his life’s work as an educator will leave as much of a legacy, particularly in Fort Worth. Together Ron and Sally Tomlinson made an outsized impact on the students to whom they opened their home and their hearts.

Source: Fort Worth Weekly