Tom Everhart

Who is Tom Everhart?

Tom Everhart was born on May 21, 1952 in Washington, D.C. He began his undergraduate studies at the Yale University of Art and Architecture in 1970. In 1972 he participated in an independent study program under Earl Hoffman at St. Mary's College. He returned to the Yale School of Art and Architecture in 1974 where he completed his graduate work in 1976, followed by postgraduate studies at the Musée de l'Orangerie, in Paris. He taught Life Drawing and Painting, briefly from 1979 to 1980, at Antioch College.

In 1980, Tom Everhart was introduced to cartoonist Charles M. Schulz at Schulz's studios in Santa Rosa, California. A few weeks prior to their meeting, Everhart, having absolutely no education in cartooning, found himself involved in a freelance project that required him to draw and present Peanuts renderings to Schulz's studios. Preparing as he would the drawings and studies for his large-scale skeleton / nature related paintings, he blew up some of the cartoonist's strips on a twenty-five foot wall in his studio, which eliminated the perimeter lines of the cartoon box, and left only the marks of the cartoonist. Schulz's painterly pen-strokes - now, larger than life - were translated into painterly brush-strokes: they were now in a language that overwhelmingly connected to Everhart's own form of expression and communication. Completely impressed with Schulz's line, he was able to reproduce the line art almost exactly. This, in turn, impressed Schulz at their meeting. It was at this time that Everhart affirmed his obsession with Schulz's line art style, and began their ongoing relationship of friendship and line style education.