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. Mr. Carlson
currently conducts the Wednesday
Group art workshop at the
Library Art Center in Newport, New Hampshire. He continues
drawing, painting, and tapestry weaving full-time. His artwork
is available for sale at several Lake Sunapee region galleries
and at his studio.
