Dubai and Abu Dhabi Exhibition 2025

The work of Tom Cross is largely based on landscape and

during his life he travelled widely in search of source material.  His first visit to the Middle East was in

1996 when he went to Dubai.  He made a

number of visits to the Middle East at the invitation of the Majlis Gallery,

painting the architecture, the old Arab houses with their Wind Towers, the

Mosques, the vast desert landscape and the Hajar Mountains of Dubai and Oman. He

became fascinated with the ferocious nature of the mountains and the desert

landscapes with their colour and spectacle. 

In the modern cities he found inspiration on the architecture old and

new.

Tom trained at Manchester where he had a great friendship

with LS Lowry.  From the very early

stages of his career, travel was an important aspect of Tom Cross' development

as a painter, beginning with a scholarship to the British School in Rome after

finishing at the Slade School of Art in 1956. A subsequent bursary from the French

Government gave him the opportunity to live and work in Paris, and in the South

of France, where he brushed shoulders with Picasso and Braque, and met

Dubuffet. He returned many times to Italy, particularly the Marche, where much

of his earlier work was executed. Venice was also a hugely important place for

him; he was able to use a studio on the Giudecca and made many visits, his work

showing the splendour of the Palladian churches and the canals.  He spent several years painting in France and

Italy before working for the Welsh Arts Council and living in Wales. The Welsh

mountains provided inspiration for a great deal of his early work and continued

to influence him into the 21st century.

He was Senior Lecturer of Fine Art at the University of

Reading where he introduced Terry Frost to the teaching programme there. He

became Principal of Falmouth School of Art in Cornwall in 1976, a position

which he held until 1987 however he maintained his painting practice rigorously

by maintaining a studio at the Wood Lane campus.

His works have been exhibited widely in Britain, the US,

Australia and the Middle East.  He also painted and travelled

extensively in the US, Mexico, Australia Guernsey to name but a few. He has

written several major works including ‘Painting the Warmth of the Sun, St Ives

Artists 1939-1975” a book about the St Ives Modernist period which was

televised into a 3-part Channel 4 TV programme and senior critics believe that

its publication paved the way for the establishment of the Tate Gallery in 1993

St Ives “The Shining Sands, Artists in Newlyn and St Ives.

The style of Toms work can be traced through his many

exhibitions. From the Slade influenced early still life and landscape paintings

of the 1950’s through to the abstract work of the 1960’s and the systems based

experimental work of the 1970’s, leading to the mature ultimate phase of

primarily landscape paintings in his home environment around the Helford River

in Cornwall. Throughout the works there is a constant sense of structure in the

work and an almost scientific analysis through observation which relates to his

early study of architecture. He was also a meticulous some note taker recording

his observations throughout his life and illustrative examples in over 50

sketchbooks which are now housed in the Tom Cross archives at Falmouth University

together with a legacy of a number of important paintings donated to the University

in 2024.

The collection is now managed by David and Carol Cross who are hugely thankful

for being asked by the Majlis gallery to return to exhibit Toms extensive

Middle East collection after the last exhibition there in 1997.