Tom Gilleon: A Life Painted in Full

A new collection from Tom Gilleon:

Painted as if It Were the Last.

Cassens Fine Art presents its first solo exhibition with Tom Gilleon, one of the most broadly collected living painters in Contemporary Western painting. A career of his length and reach is rarely given a room of its own outside the major markets, and the chance to host that room in Hamilton is one we have been working toward for years.

The relationship began with Gilleon approaching us, which is uncommon at his level of the market and not something we take for granted. Galleries usually do the courting; in this case, an artist with decades of work behind him saw fit to start the conversation with us himself. Galleries reach this kind of trust only by spending years earning it. That Gilleon chose to begin the relationship with Cassens Fine Art is a marker of where our program has come to, and we hold his choice with the weight it deserves. He will join us in Hamilton, Montana, for the opening and an artist talk, an in-person appearance he does not often make. Collectors and admirers will have the chance to stand in front of the work and then hear the painter speak to it directly, the kind of evening worth planning a trip around. We are glad to host him.

If you are a collector in the Contemporary Western art movement, you are likely aware of Tom Gilleon. Perhaps you’ve seen his radiant colors on the cover of Western Art Collector, Art of the West, or Southwest Art. It’s possible you could have read about his many awards and honors in art publications all across the country. Or you’ve happened to have seen his work in one of the permanent collections in the C.M. Russell Museum, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, or many others. 

No matter the place or time, Tom Gilleon’s talent has saturated the Western Art community, and yet he is one of the most humble artists around. So much so, Gilleon would never in a million years voluntarily tell us these stories; it isn’t something he thinks people would care to hear. Instead, these stories reach us through a longtime friend and colleague of Gilleon's, someone who has spent over a decade drawing these tales out of him and has shared them with us in preparation for this exhibition.

At Cassens Fine Art, the artists we choose to represent are ones whose work rewards a closer look, and whose careers reward a longer one. What follows is the story we want our collectors to carry into the gallery as the kind of background that changes how a painting reads when you stand in front of it.

Gilleon is not someone who leads with his accomplishments. He grew up entertaining himself by sketching next to the kerosene lamps provided by his grandmother. The same grandmother who took him in after his parents decided they could not care for their fifth child. This was not an easy decision on their part, but rather a necessary one after the family was stretched too thin while tending to their daughter who was diagnosed with polio. Little, 5 year old Gilleon moved in with his Cherokee grandmother, a Trail of Tears survivor, and lived out in 1940s rural Florida where electricity couldn’t reach. Those years consisted of, drawing, hunting, shooting, foraging, and soaking in every ounce of the Cherokee culture. These beginnings are the foundation of everything that makes Gilleon’s work what it is today. It is also the kind of origin story that explains everything about why we wanted this exhibition on our walls.

As a teenager in the early 1960s, Gilleon got a position as a cryptographer decrypting naval messages during the Cuban Missile Crisis, learning details that convinced him there might not be an America to sail home to. After a few years of service, he was hired as a communications specialist at Pan American World Airlines. He was initially tasked with radio operations, but it was not long before Pan Am discovered his artistic talents and reassigned him to illustrate NASA’s Saturn and Apollo space programs. It was this position that taught him how to eliminate unnecessary details and distractions within his art. 60 years later, and Gilleon’s artwork is on the Moon. Not as illustrations or hired work, but as a founding artist of the Lunar Museum of Art, chosen as one of the first humans whose art has been considered worthy of representing Earth’s creativity in Space. 15 images of his pieces were sent out on a rocket to the lunar surface and will stay there forever. 

Gilleon spent 25 years at the highest level of artistic illustration on earth, working alongside legends, designing structures that were built and seen by tens of millions of people, and when he decided to walk away from it all to paint on a cattle ranch in Montana, he soaked up and brought all that experience with him. He doesn’t speak of it much; he does not carry it as the magnificent credential it is. Instead, he carries it as a foundation for the work he has been able to create for the years after. 

Despite being one of the most decorated living Western artists, Gilleon is known to be an introvert. He lives and works not in a penthouse in New York, not a beach house in Malibu, but rather a secluded ranch in central Montana. It’s an old ranch. So old that Lewis and Clark visited it in 1805. Years later, the land became home to close friends of the famous western painter, Charlie Russell. When Russell visited the area, he would ride on the same trails to Square Butte that Gilleon rides over 100 years later, both painting the same rolling hills decades apart. Those Montana plains are of great importance to Gilleon, representing the freedom and independence he and Russell both so appreciated. And, for Gilleon, that is far more priceless than any art studio in the Hamptons.  For a Montana gallery, that connection to place and to Russell is not lost on us.

The natural lands and native cultures of the West are the true inspiration for Gilleon. His approach to Native American subjects consists of great time, dedication, and authenticity. He paints with the knowledge gained from his experience with his Cherokee grandmother, along with decades of research. Gilleon was honored at the Blackfoot (Niitsitapi) tribal naming ceremony by being designated an official tribal name. This was an extremely rare opportunity, given specifically in recognition of his accurate portrayal of the culture and his personal character. This was never publicized by Gilleon. The gallery learned of it only through the trust of his close friend, and we share it here because it speaks to the man behind the work that will hang on our walls.

Gilleon's auction market is one we track, as a gallery handling work at his level has to. The results speak plainly. Hair Apparent sold for $265,000 at the C. M. Russell Museum Live Auction, a record for a living artist at that auction. Mourning Star followed at $350,000 at the same auction in 2021. Dirge With Black Feet sold for $375,000 at the Autry Museum's Masters of the American West in 2022. The C. M. Russell Museum has also given Gilleon a full solo, Let Icons Be Icons: The Art of R. Tom Gilleon, the first time the museum has extended that honor to a living artist. At auction, Gilleon's work has been finding a new ceiling. At the gallery, the floor is still the primary market. Collectors who follow the gap know what that combination is worth.

As he approached his 80th birthday, Gilleon sat on an airplane and wrote himself a letter asking: “What if an artist knew his next painting would be his last? What would he choose to paint?” Those words became the discipline he applies to every single piece he paints now. The works from then on are part of his MMXX series, the art he makes as if it were his last. This was not announced as a show or exhibition, but simply the way Gilleon began painting his master works. And still, that is only part of the story.

We wish we could tell you of his full baseball scholarship to University of Florida, of his time in the Navy, his experiences in the blockade around Cuba, his techniques learned from drawing for the Apollo program, his 25 years at Imagineering designs theme parks all around the world, the one private park he designed for a prince in Malaysia, his kinship with the Blackfoot community, his many connections to C.M. Russell, how he feels about having work on the Moon. However, what makes Tom Gilleon remarkable is not any single story. It is that there are so many of them, and that he has never once led with a single one. The life that has been lived is extraordinary. The man who has lived it, even more so. We are honored to host him.

Join us Friday, June 5th, for an evening with Tom Gilleon, beginning with an artist talk from 5-6 PM and continuing through the opening reception until 7 PM. The exhibition, featuring pieces from his private collection, including some never before seen publicly, will be on display through June 24, 2026.