Collection: Tom Gilleon

“What if an artist knew that his next painting was to be his last? What would he choose to paint? How careful would he be to make this one the best he has ever done ... make every brushstroke be purposeful, effective, and masterful?”  — Tom Gilleion

Known for his luminescent style and authentic portrayal of northern plains tribes, Tom Gilleon is one of the top selling artists in the Contemporary Western art movement. Raised by his grandparents, Tom’s grandmother was a fulll-blooded Cherokee Indian.  She taught him how to live off the land, gather herbs, learn to shoot a gun at a young age, and be self sufficient.  His Native American paintings are very personal and soulful, deeply connected to his heritage.

Tom’s sophisticated use of colors has been described as "magical elegance” by Patrick Hemingway and compared by art critics to Edgar Degas and Mark Rothko. In addition to being an American Western fine art painter and cattle rancher in Montana, he is widely acclaimed as one of the most innovative artists in the world, co-creating the digital art platform, PIXoilsTM, with creative designer Marshall Monroe. 

Formerly with Walt Disney Imagineering for 30-years, Gilleon worked alongside Disney art legend Herb Ryman and created the founding design concepts for EPCOT and Disneyland Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai theme parks.

Gilleon’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Western Art Museum, The C.M. Russell Museum, the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, the Scottsdale Museum of The West, and the Booth Museum of Western Art.

On January 2024, The Scottsdale Museum of The West will open The Tom Gilleon Retrospective, a 70-painting exhibit spanning Gilleon’s 50-year career with oil paintings from Disney and Montana, digital paintings, and NFTs—showing until September 2024.

Recognized as “Linking the great American artists of the 19th century with today’s Contemporary Western art movement,” Gilleon was inducted as a founding member of the C.M. Russell Museum Skull Society of Artists in 2015. A PBS documentary, The Art of Tom Gilleon, is being produced for national broadcast in 2025.