About Thom Ross

Thom Ross is an artist based in Santa Fe, NM, known for painting, book illustrations, and installation art featuring life-sized cutout figures depicting famous people and historical events.

Born in San Francisco in 1952, Thom has had a lifelong interest in American history and is the "folk hero" who is a product of that history and has long been the motivating force behind his work. His emphasis, however, is focused on the historical "folk hero" compared to the mythical "folk hero." (An example of a historical folk hero would be Jesse James, and a fictional folk hero would be Paul Bunyan; one existed while the other is a product of tall tales.)

Ross works in various media, including painting, book illustration, and life-sized recreations of historical scenes. Favorite subjects include Cowboys, Indians, and historical battles in the American Indian Wars. Ross has illustrated at least 20 books, including a history of baseball. In 2001, Ross published a book, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Words and Pictures. In 2002, Ross illustrated the 100th-anniversary edition of Owen Wister's novel, The Virginian.

Ross' first plywood installation was a 1976 cutout of Clint Eastwood, which he and a friend placed as a prank above a railroad trestle to recreate a scene from Dirty Harry in the location where the scene had been filmed five years earlier. In 1983, Ross created "154 Nevermore" - an installation of 154 plywood ravens on a highway in Jackson, Wyoming (recreated in steel in 2000). In 1984, Ross created "The Catch"- a diorama for the Baseball Hall of Fame illustrating a legendary catch with the same nickname by Willie Mays in the 1954 World Series. He created a new version of the work in 2004 and displayed it in various locations in New York City. In 1998, Ross created "The Defining Moment" for SAFECO Field, a tableau of 11 steel cutouts of a Ken Griffey, a junior playing in the 1995 baseball playoffs. Ross' 2005 work, "Custer's Last Stand," was a recreation of life-sized warriors riding life-sized horses in the Battle of Little Bighorn at the original site at Medicine Tail Coulee in Montana. That exhibit toured Cody, Wyoming, Jackson, Wyoming, and Sun Valley, Idaho. In September 2008, Ross recreated a 1902 photograph of Buffalo Bill Cody and his "Wild West Show" and his traveling troupe of Native Americans in front of the Cliff House at Ocean Beach in San Francisco.