Tom Babbitt

I wear a few different hats… This was always true of my family growing up. My parents, Sam & Natalie Babbitt, were always doing something creative – from writing and staging musicals to collaborating on children’s books to inventing an experimental women’s college, to publishing multiple novels, like the classic, Tuck Everlasting (in multiple languages) to playing piano to doing radio sketches… then literally to Hollywood – and to Broadway…

Naturally, this climate empowered me, inspired me – to at least attempt similar flights of fancy. So I became a singer/songwriter, composer, arranger, mixer, multi instrumentalist and performer; an (award-winning) animator, filmmaker and film editor and a Psychotherapist in private practice for over two decades. Seems normal to me… and supremely satisfying and fun.

During the pandemic, the current body of fine artwork burst forth surprisingly fully formed, seeming to draw from everything that preceded it. They are amusing, surprising, and dark; they are cartoonish and complex and serious. They are 3D and 2D and collaged.

Within what is essentially an odd collection of “self-portraits,” I’ve been able to freely express what I see as a kind of labyrinthian, multi-layered inner picture of what constitutes a human person – stories half-remembered, ancient faces carrying the weight of entire cities on their heads; encoded, unreadable hieroglyphics tattooed into the texture of their skin… The paintings are as much about discovering and uncovering impressions, ideas and long-forgotten tales from the collective unconscious of… us.