Awakening to an Obscure Painter’s Gifts

In the beginning, every career move Tom Field made seemed right.

The young painter, born and raised in Fort Wayne, Ind., mingled with some of the world’s premiere 20th century artists, including Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning, Josef Albers, Franz Kline and Joseph Fiore--all of whom he knew in the 1950s at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. At 26, he emerged in a vibrant San Francisco art scene as a noteworthy Abstract Expressionist.

Then the worst thing happened: nothing. Field fell short of his famed friends’ successes, remaining relatively anonymous until his death at 65 in 1995.

In a tribute to a career that was prolific if not famed, an exhibition titled “Tom Field, Pausing to See: Abstract Expressionist Paintings, Black Mountain College to the San Francisco Bay” has been put together at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, where it continues through June 30. The 36-work retrospective of 22 oils and 14 watercolors is the largest solo show the artist has ever had.

Center curator Denise Di Salvo of Irvine was a close friend of Field’s in the 1980s when they were neighbors in San Francisco. She is also the executor of his estate.

“When I first met Tom and saw his work, I was moved by it in a profound way,” said Di Salvo, 44, who bought Field’s 1981 “Irish Wars” for 12 monthly payments of $5 each. She recalled Field painting on cheap cotton fabric at times because he couldn’t afford canvas, and working in the most unfavorable conditions, whether on a tiny porch or in a basement.

Although Field didn’t leave a will, he requested that his friends, to whom he loaned paintings for safekeeping, give his works the recognition they didn’t receive in his lifetime.

The show marks a growing interest in his work. Collectors of his paintings include private patrons and the State University of New York Anderson Gallery in Buffalo.

“I think it’s a coup for us to have one of Tom Field’s paintings,” said Robert J. Bertholf, curator of the Anderson Gallery’s art and literary collection, which documents the San Francisco Renaissance of the 1950s and ‘60s and contains Field’s 1961 “Portrait of Ebbe,” a 5-foot-high oil painting of a man defined by heavy, black paint strokes.

Bertholf compares Field’s best works to better-known Bay Area painters of the period, Jess, David Park and Elmer Bischoff. “Tom was a first-rate painter,” Bertholf said.

Early oil paintings displayed in the show, including the 1954 “Bird in Flight” and 1955 “Deep Blues,” are among his quintessential, representative Abstract Expressionist works. His later paintings became more figurative and included watercolors.

Field showed a knack for painting at an early age. He told friends that at age 5, he took a petunia and smashed it on paper to experiment with color. Encouraged by his aunt, Field attended Central Catholic High School in Fort Wayne, Ind., and graduated in 1948, winning a scholarship to the privately funded Fort Wayne Art School (now the Fort Wayne Art Museum).

Field left school to serve in the Korean War for two years as an Army surgery assistant. He returned to the United States in 1953 and was urged by his art teacher to continue his studies. He used most of his GI Bill money, a stipend of about $110 monthly, for tuition.

From 1953 to 1956, he attended Black Mountain College--a small liberal arts school with an emphasis on the arts and experimentation. His instructors included New York painter Fiore, sculptor John Chamberlain and Rauschenberg.

Field’s time at Black Mountain is documented in Mary Emma Harris’ 1987 book, “The Arts at Black Mountain College” and Martin Duberman’s 1972 “Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community.”.

With a short temper and an affinity for alcohol, Field didn’t take negative criticism well. In the books there are anecdotes about his wild side. One night he returned from a party with friends and rammed his dark-blue Buick sedan into the side of his school dorm--he was on crutches for months.

Field’s studies were cut short when the college shut down in 1956 for lack of funding.

Then 26, he moved to San Francisco to find work, ultimately becoming a merchant seaman. His job afforded him wages to buy materials and large chunks of time--he spent months at sea and had months to paint while waiting to ship out again.

During that time in San Francisco, the Beats were on the rise and Abstract Expressionism dominated the art scene, as it had at Black Mountain College. Clyfford Still, Richard Diebenkorn and others led the way at the San Francisco Art Institute (then the California School of Fine Arts).

Field became part of the San Francisco Renaissance, a group that grew up outside formal settings like the art institute. He made some early strides with group exhibitions at a number of local galleries in the ‘60s. And he was part of a group show at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Annual in 1962, where his work won the top award. He also was invited to participate in the San Francisco Art Institute Annual in 1964. In 1978, he was featured in “Seven From Black Mountain” at the Top Floor Gallery.

But his career never took off, in terms of recognition or sales. In fact, his first solo show in the Bay Area was a memorial exhibition organized in 1997 by close friends and colleagues at the now-defunct 871 Fine Arts Gallery.

“He was a terrible self-promoter and just wasn’t interested in the commercial end of the art business,” Bertholf said.

After the ‘60s, museum invitations were few and far between. Field’s heavy drinking became crippling. His health had deteriorated and he joined Synanon, a rehab center for alcoholics, between 1974 and 1977. He lived out his life in near poverty, a minor figure in art.

“Tom was not alone in his anonymity. We were all being ignored by the art establishment at the time,” said grade school pal and painter Paul Alexander, 70, of Mendocino, Calif.

Alexander attended Black Mountain College and moved to San Francisco with Field. “Most artists from San Francisco who made a reputation made it outside the area, either in Los Angeles or in New York.”

Still, Field continued to paint, undiscouraged. He loved cooking, gardening and listening to jazz and classical music.

“He was an ‘undergrounder’ and remained so,” said longtime friend Robin Blaser, 76, a Vancouver, Canada, collector who owns an early Field work, “as if fulfilling Jackson Pollock’s recommendation that [the underground] is where the artist works.”

“He was a lively person, and it shows in his paintings, which are remarkably vivid,” Alexander said. “Tom never worried about next week or last week. Whatever he was doing at the moment was the most important thing in his life. And throughout his entire life, he never gave up on painting.”

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* “Tom Field, Pausing to See: Abstract Expressionist Paintings, Black Mountain College to the San Francisco Bay,” Orange County Center for Contemporary Art, 117 N. Sycamore St., Santa Ana. Ends June 30. (714) 667-1517.