Photo provided to the Times Observer Tom Paquette’s work “Font” will soon be on display as part of the Erie Art Museum’s Spring Show.

Tom Paquette has developed national recognition as a landscape painter.

A painting that he will soon have on display – “Font” – at the Erie Art Museum’s Spring Show is wildly different.

Paquette, who lives in Warren, Pennsylvania, is nationally recognized for his landscape paintings going back to the late 1980s – with over sixty solo exhibitions in galleries and museums across the country and paintings displayed around the world in U.S. embassies.

But this painting?

It’s thickly layered oil, about one square foot and about an inch thick with paint which Paquette said is “non-objective” and depicts “nothing at all.”

“My dealers love my landscape paintings, so that is what I send them,” he said. “I haven’t told them about these works.”

Paquette explained that he’s been making works like this for seven years but the show in Erie is only the second time he’s offered to exhibit them outside of his own studio.

Developing his work in this style was an “enjoyable, environmental way to reduce the sometimes large quantities of excess paint left on (my) palette after working on large landscape paintings,” he said.

The challenge was to turn that excess – which would otherwise be thrown out – into art.

He said that gave him “new ways to paint without having to make it look like something.”

“‘Font’ just happened to come to resemble a volcano from above, hence the title,” he said.

“The one rule is that the paint can only be left-over from another painting. Nothing is planned,” he explained. “It’s all experimental. If I feel the painting needs new colors, I just have to wait for different colors to show up in decent quantities to use. It might take a few days for that. It can also be years before anything workable turns up for a painting. Using new paint would defeat the purpose, of course. They can’t be rushed.”

He began working on “Font” in 2018 and wrapped it up earlier this year.

The Erie Art Museum’s Spring Show opens March 15 and includes works by 68 other regional artists. The show will run through August 9 and a reception will be held this Friday.