From Comic strip to canvas | the art of tom everhart
October 24, 2024-January 4, 2025
Great Gallery, 2nd Floor
This exhibition explores the work of California-based artist Tom Everhart (1952–Present). His lively, large-scale, and colorful works are inspired by the iconic and beloved PEANUTS characters created by artist and illustrator Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000).Painter and print maker Tom Everhart was born in 1952, in Washington, D.C. By 1978, the artist had completed his graduate studies at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture and a post-graduate course at the Musee de l’Orangerie, in Paris. Everhart returned to the United States and taught life drawing and painting at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio.
In 1980, Tom Everhart accepted a job as a freelance artist tasked with drafting and presenting cartoon studies of several of the PEANUTS characters including Snoopy, Charlie Brown, and Woodstock to their creator Charles M. Schulz and the Schultz studios. Despite having no formal training in cartooning, Everhart’s lively images were praised by Schulz. This chance meeting between Schulz and Everhart in Santa Rosa, California had a profound impact on the painter and inspired a deep and lasting friendship between the two artists for two decades.
Everhart is the only fine artist trained by the illustrator and cartoonist Schulz and legally authorized by both Charles M. Schulz and Iconix to use subject matter from the PEANUTS strip in his work. Everhart’s paintings and lithographs are bold and passionate depictions of some of the most beloved, iconic comic strip characters. The Zanesville Museum of Art would like to thank its docents, or guides, for writing the object labels for this exhibition. Their interpretation of the paintings and prints invite viewers to look more closely at the works of art and inspire a deeper appreciation of these beloved characters.
Image Above: Tom Everhart (1952–Present), Pop Star, 2006, lithograph on paper. On loan from an anonymous lender.
