Thomas Futyna Biography
United States, born 1982
Born in Perth, Western Australia, I've always been the weird kid who only draws. Born to a Polish immigrant family and English being my second language, school has never been kind to me. I only maybe had 2 or 3 friends and we'd make our own comic books and board games.
My family and I moved to the States in 1993, Allentown Pennsylvania, still the weird kid with broken English but now with an accent. I didn't fit in anywhere. Depression kicked in hard. I continued drawing comics, trying to fit every detail into those little squares like frames in a film. Being brought up in a strict religious family, I wasn't allowed to watch R rated, or even some PG-13 films, so I made my own R rated stories that were full of graphic violence and nudity. My folks realized my talent, after grounding me, they sent me to art schools in the area. It was at Baum School of Art I discovered my love for painting after learning about a Hawaiian artist named Christian Riese Lassen. He captured my love for detail, the ocean and marine life I left behind in Australia, and the use of color. I created my own paintings in his style examining the methods in his artwork. Unfortunately, I didn't have much success in selling my art, just occasionally here and there. I realized I was just an imitator. The restaurant manager I worked for did like my paintings, so he commissioned me to do his laser-tag arena. After that, I found two clients to do murals at their homes and businesses, but not much since.
I was told in 2010 about an art school that teaches old methods the masters use in their technique. It was run by an Artist named Myron Barnstone of the Barnstone Studio of Drawing and Design. He reignited the artist in me. The first lesson had me in tears of joy, learning about the golden section, patterns and correspondence. My taste transformed from painting dolphins and seascapes to the classical renaissance and the neo classical. But I still didn't have much success in Allentown. When I moved to Baltimore, Maryland with my girlfriend at the time, I had a little more success selling originals and prints. My work grabbed the attention of Italian restaurant owners to paint seasonal art on their windows, to a full mural inside. They become my regular clients. I worked as a funeral home delivery driver, picking up the deceased from their homes in the middle of the night and transporting them to their assigned funeral homes. I started learning more about religions, alchemy and the occult while working the graveyard shift. It inspired me to incorporate those sad surroundings into my art. My originals along with prints have been selling all over the states and overseas.
Currently, I'm a freelance artist, working mostly on murals in people's homes and businesses, and recently designed a mural for Walmart and their program with NOW art. I sometimes combine my old and new style of work trying to find my voice, or just go with the flow in my evolution. Any free time that I have, I work on my passion project I started in 2017, hoping for one day to be my masterpiece. If only my 2 black cats, Loki and Floki will allow it. I forgot to mention that I love cats, and it goes well with me still being strange at 42. But I'm comfortable with it now.
