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Biography | Portfolio
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Combining a sense of homage with an explosion of expression, Everhart’s paintings and lithographs are the culmination of a 20-year close association with cartoonist Charles M. Schulz and the Peanuts ™ phenomenon. As the only fine artist authorized to artistically render the Peanuts characters, Everhart transcends the appeal of the comic strip’s familiar faces, transforming them into studies in brilliant, multidimensional color and personal, often comical commentaries on the people and events of our time.
“When Tom began painting his huge canvases showing exaggerated poses or elements of one of the Peanuts characters, Sparky was charmed by them. As Sparky pointed out, ‘Each art form has its freedoms and limitations, and Tom plays with the characters in a way that is impossible within the confines of a comic strip.’” -- Jeanne Schulz, commenting on Everhart’s relationship with her late husband
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Everhart was a successful painter of large-scale landscapes before being asked to render drawings of the Schulz’s characters for a commercial project in 1980. With no background in cartooning, Everhart prepared for the task by projecting Schulz's comic strips onto a 25-foot wall in his studio for closer examination. He was stunned to discover that, blown up larger than life, Schulz's pen strokes closely connected to his own painting style. His immediate fascination with Schulz's “line” and his remarkable ability to capture it with his own distinct interpretation impressed Schulz and launched a friendship and collaboration that continued until Schulz’s death in 2000.
In 1988, Everhart began taking the familiar characters in a new direction: continuously exploring his artistic passions by recording the movements of light and color in imaginary, non-literal landscapes and settings. He works on finding new ways to, as he says, “seduce and amuse the relationship between the subject matter and the process,” and most of all, express his desire “to record the experience of my astonishment and shock at human nature life, death, bad hair-dos, amusing fashion, ignorant observations, earnest ridiculousnesss and my sense that in today’s society, it is the experience of the normal and everyday, rather than the unusual or different, that is most astonishing.”
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