Thomas DeVany Forrestall

Thomas DeVany Forrestall

Thomas DeVany Forrestall, painter (b at Middleton, NS 11 Mar 1936). After graduating in 1958 from MOUNT ALLISON UNIVERSITY (where he studied with Alex COLVILLE), Tom Forrestall was assistant curator at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton (1959), but became a full-time painter the following year. His realistic works, often done in egg tempera, convey his ideas of the East Coast landscape and its dwellings. From the early 1960s, Forrestall experimented with panels shaped from triangles to T-forms, each chosen to fit his painterly ideas. He has also painted a large number of out-of-doors watercolours which express much the same ideas as his egg tempera works, but in a more relaxed and joyous mood. His watercolours, in contrast to his more metaphysical and individual canvases, form one long series and deal with a sense of place. He became an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1986.