About the Artist
THOMAS MCKNIGHT
Thomas McKnight is an artist somewhat out of sync with his times. Born in 1941 in Lawrence, Kansas, he came of age artistically during the 1970s, when art had practically done itself in with minimalism and conceptual experimentation. His work, full of color and image, seems to be a reaction to that gray decade. He discovered art at thirteen when his mother gave him a set of oil paints. His first painting, a snowy castle on a hill, was similar to those he still creates. At sixteen, his career path was encouraged by Harper’s Bazaar art director Alexey Brodovitch, who told him he “had it.”
Early Life
After growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Montreal, and New York, McKnight studied art at Wesleyan University and spent a year in Paris developing a love for European civilization. He worked at Time magazine for eight years, interrupted by army service in Korea. In 1970, a vacation in Greece shifted everything. Two years later, he left corporate life and began painting full-time on the island of Mykonos, where his distinctive style took shape.
Career
In 1979 on Mykonos, he met Renate, a vacationing Austrian student. They married the next year and moved to America. During the 1980s, his work became widely popular. He produced hundreds of serigraph editions and published six books, including two in Japanese. His work reached an even larger audience in Japan, where he was commissioned to paint views of Kobe. In 1994, the White House asked him to create the first of three official Christmas card paintings for President Clinton.
Today
After growing up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Montreal, and New York, McKnight studied art at Wesleyan University and spent a year in Paris developing a love for European civilization. He worked at Time magazine for eight years, interrupted by army service in Korea. In 1970, a vacation in Greece shifted everything. Two years later, he left corporate life and began painting full-time on the island of Mykonos, where his distinctive style took shape.