Tom Applegate.  In his own words.

I am happiest when I am outside doing something adventurous.  I suppose I should say, " I am happiest in the studio painting something or other."  But it is not true.  It's my parents fault.  They moved to the middle of the desert in Arizona when I was two months old. It became my life and I loved it!  I was being called the desert rat by three and by four I was one.  This was when I was exposed to art too.  My mother was an artist and painted. My  Uncle Fred was an artist and visited us a number of times in the desert. 

And once my mothers uncle, a successful artist from New York came to visit.  This was about when I got my first paint by numbers set too.   

I was Devastated when my parents moved to San Diego when I was five.  Finding myself in a city was pure hell. We took to haunting the canyons behind our house and then I discovered the ocean and spent many great days there playing in the waves.  I watched the surfers and knew I needed to do that.  Eventually I became a rampant surfer and skateboarder.  Then my friends parents bought 200 acres of land east of San Diego.  It was a wonderland of desert boulders.   The dessert was back and has remained back.

I got really into art during my time in San Diego.  I was fascinated with art history and studied many books about it and art techniques.  My outdoor activities had a major influence on my art 

​

I started getting into rock climbing in my later teens, and after my brand new surfboard was stolen on a surf trip in Mexico, I had to make a decision,    buy another surfboard or buy climbing gear.  I chose climbing and basically quite surfing for many years.  I became a rampant climber.  I ended up in North Idaho and was climbing rock, mountains and frozen waterfalls in the northwest and in Canada. 

My art shifted to painting mountains and rocks from photos I took on my trips to places like the Bugaboos in Canada. 

I became obsessed with becoming a Himalayan climber.  K2 was the mountain I dreamed of, not Everest.  But an incident with an avalanche on a mountain in Canada that broke my knee into 15 pieces changed that.  Snow seemed bad after that.  Very bad.  I went on to do all my hardest rock climbing after that and became a pilot.  Being the adventurous type I eventually got into flying competition aerobatics and did that for about ten years.

​

My life now is creating art that feels good to me and any particular time.  Which may be a landscape, experimental film, an abstract, or creating  something combining my paintings and photographs in Photoshop.  I work on the beach, surf, climb. do solo desert explorations, explore the mountains and various other things.  

​

I guess my point is that nature and my adventures into it has always been a major artistic influence to me.  And the art I produced changed with the changes in my life and activities.  That the way I prefer it.  

​

​Tom Applegate

There is a whole unimaginable world surrounding all of us.  A world of endless possibilities.    I can sense it, and sometimes glimpse it. and other times fall into it.  Our lives are  storylines full of holes that with the proper vision can be filled.