Partner Andrew Patner (1990–2015) | Books The Date Book | |
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Occupation Illustrator, Caricaturist, Pianist, Dance instructor, Dancer Alma maters Yellow Springs High School, Cleveland Institute of Music, Case Western Reserve University Nominations Lambda Literary Award for Belles Lettres | ||
Tom Bachtell is a self-taught artist who is an illustrator and caricaturist for The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town as well as other sections, contributing regularly for 27 years. He has done work for Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Forbes, Bon Appétit, Town & Country, Mother Jones, New York, Poetry, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Observer and London’s Evening Standard as well as Marshall Field, Lands' End and the chamber-music series at the University of Chicago as part of his ad-campaign clientele. His brush-and-ink style is considered to be reminiscent of American cartoonists from the 1920s and 1930s. He was a finalist for the 18th Lambda Literary Awards as illustrator along with editor Robert Trachtenberg for the book “When I Knew” under the Belles Lettres category.
Contents
Early life and education
Tom Bachtell was interested in drawing as a child and was especially fixated on the older works from New Yorker cartoonists from the 1930s and 1940s such as Peter Arno, Charles Addams, Arnold Roth, James Thurber, Syd Hoff and Al Hirschfeld. His mother, an editor and writer, encouraged him to draw. The earliest portrait he did is that of his mother when he was 4 or 5 years old. When he was 10, he drew his impression of the guests at his parents’ cocktail party at their Ohio home on a portable chalkboard. He saw the adults as fancily dressed, laughing and drinking. He remembered enjoying it. He never planned it but thought it was good and had social satire in it. Tom attended and graduated from Yellow Springs High School in 1975. He thought drawing was not a legitimate career so he pursued other interests and went to university and conservatory. He majored in English and music (under the Joint Music Program at Cleveland Institute of Music) and minored in dance at Case Western Reserve University. He trained as a pianist and studied the harpsichord at the Cleveland Institute of Music. During college, he drew for friends and for himself. He graduated his liberal arts degree magna cum laude in 1980. In his early 20s he started a modern dance company. At a point Tom thought he wouldn’t be good enough to make a living from performing music. After finishing college, he decided to teach himself how to draw and make a living from it. When he was 26 his mother passed away.
Career
Tom took only one life drawing class and avoided art classes in order to develop a natural style. He thought the art classes were strict, pompous, would make him obsessed with technique and weren’t fun. In 1983, Tom moved to Chicago and worked as a copywriter at Montgomery Ward. He observed other illustrations, then drew his own illustrations and sent his work to art directors. Mare Early, an art director for the Chicago Tribune, called him in to show his work. He then got jobs in Chicago, working for the Chicago Tribune (which led to him quitting his copywriting job) as well as some other publications and doing a caricature of Tom Wolfe for Advertising Age. Around that time, the New Yorker was changing and was actively seeking to incorporate more illustrations into their magazine. Robert Gottlieb was the editor at the time. The magazine was looking for illustrators to hire. They saw Tom’s caricature for Tom Wolfe in another magazine and in 1989 the art director, Chris Curry, called him and hired him occasionally to do caricatures for “Goings On About Town” section with his first sketch being that of David Byrne. Tom never thought he’d be a caricaturist. He thought he didn’t have the talent for it. However, because that is what the magazine wanted, he had to learn how to do it and discovered that he did have the talent for it. In 1993, he began drawing for the “Talk of the Town” section of the New Yorker and has done so for 27 years. In 2005, he was a finalist for the 18th Annual Lambda Literary Awards as illustrator along with editor Robert Trachtenberg for the book “When I Knew” under the Belles Lettres category. His work has since appeared in numerous publications.
Style and technique
Tom developed his own style through experimentation and observation. Through his unorthodox methods, he learnt and discovered a lot by accident, using his ignorance to experiment with tools. When he first started coloring he would create masks out of contact paper and used anything to create color such as using deodorant to draw clouds. He had no knowledge of brush types, techniques and materials and would buy interesting brushes to experiment with them. He primarily works in black and white, however, he has also done color works outside of the New Yorker. In his current process, he superimposes different heads over others on paper and will draw a variety of caricatures in order to achieve the type of caricature he is looking for and remain adaptable. His style is said to be “fluid, spontaneous”.
Personal life
Tom’s partner of 25 years, Andrew Patner, died at the age of 55 of a rapid, bacterial infection at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago on 3 February 2015. Tom is currently an active chamber pianist and teaches and performs swing dancing, mainly the Lindy and Balboa.
