Tom Loepp (American b.1954)

Madison Square Park, 2016

Oil on linen

Tom Loepp (born June 4, 1954) is an American figurative, landscape, and portrait painter. After high school, instead of attending university, he dedicated years to studying figure drawing from life. Loepp began his career by drawing portraits in public and honed his portraiture skills on the streets of Greenwich Village, NYC, during the late 1970s. His artistic journey expanded to plein air cityscapes of New York City.

Loepp’s paintings are held in prestigious collections, including the Museum of the City of New York, Campbell’s Soup (London, UK), the United States Supreme Court (Washington, DC), and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (Menlo Park, CA). Notably, he painted from the top of the Brooklyn Bridge during its renovation in 1988, capturing the workers and the cityscape. Later, Loepp spent two years painting views of New York City and New Jersey from the top of the World Trade Center.

His philosophy: "To make the world my studio and its inhabitants my models seemed, if not profound, at least interesting."12