Biography
E.
Thor Carlson was born in Gardner, Massachusetts on September
18, 1925. He has drawn since childhood and began to paint
in oils at the age of ten. His first murals were painted
in 1942-43 for the Gardner High School auditorium. Upon
graduation, he received a scholarship to attend the Art
School of the Worcester Art Museum. His studies were
interrupted by WWII and a hitch in the Navy as a Sea
Bee in the South Pacific.
While
overseas, he took his entrance exams for Yale's School
of Fine Arts. He began there in 1946. Before graduation,
he was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship for a year's study
at the Academia in Florence to study fresco painting.
Returning to Yale, he completed his fifth and final year.
He graduated 'In Primi Honoris' with a BFA in painting
(1951).
Thor
Carlson has shown his work in major exhibits at the Worcester
and Fitchburg Museums, at the gallery of the State Street
Bank in Boston; also, Saint Peter's Lutheran Church on
Madison Avenue, New York City, and in Dublin, at Sandymont.
President Aemon DeValera purchased one of his works for
the Vice Royal Gallery.
His
works are in many public and private collections both
in the U.S.A. and in Europe and North Africa. In addition
to painting and drawing, he has done tapestry weaving,
stone and Starship Alpha Omega his gilded wood sculpture
which depicts many of the world's alphabets.
He
created 21 illustrations for Houghton & Mifflin's
first American version of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.
His artwork is available for sale
at several Lake Sunapee region galleries and at his studio.
