“It’s like chess,” Tom Bacher says of his self-invented process for painting. “I have to think 20 moves ahead.”
The results of that strategic approach to making art, Luminous Paintings by Tom Bacher in the downtown Aronoff Center for the Arts’ Weston Art Gallery, fills all three galleries, which is unusual but not unprecedented for the Weston.
“We have to consider the stature of the artist and scale of the work,” Weston Director Dennis Harrington says of his decision to give Bacher the entire space. “Tom is certainly worthy. The interest is there. And for scale, one painting is 18 feet wide and another 23 feet.
Bacher tells me he grew up on the city’s West Side, went to St. Jude Elementary and Elder High School, and had a father and grandfather in the bakery business.
“Some people still remember the rye bread from Bacher’s Bakery,” he says. “My dad’s arms were all muscle from kneading the dough.”
Bacher, 57, tall and square-built, is wearing a rumpled plaid shirt and has a couple of days’ beard when we talk. He has gotten up early (for him) to meet me at 2 in the afternoon in his downtown studio. He ordinarily works from midnight or 1 a.m. to 6 or 7 a.m., then goes home to Bridgetown and watches vintage cowboy TV series.
Read the full interview with Bacher here.
