Tom Antell is an enrolled member of the White Earth reservation in Minnesota. He has lived on the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe reservation near Hayward, Wisconsin since 2001. 

 

Native history and culture, both past and present, is the subject of Antell’s work. Antell manipulates traditional symbols of American exceptionalism and bounty. The cornucopia, or “horn of plenty”, evokes the peaceable kingdom of American mythology, the emblem of a Happy Thanksgiving. In Antell’s depiction, the cornucopia becomes a dunce’s cap, a sailor’s hat, a tornado, the offerings more dismal – despair and darkness on the horizon’s edge. A cast of hapless characters engage in colorful panoramas of colonization. These visual allegories, presented in bright colors and lavish patterns, are both emotionally dark and humorous. His subjects bear witness to or participate in the “bloody colonization of America.” Stylized sailor figures drift cluelessly toward the New World, oblivious to what is about to unfold but soon to become part of the disease, devastation, and greed that culminates with the unleashing of WWII naval bombs and atomic blasts.

 

At heart, Antell is a storyteller. His paintings form a cycle of individual, theatrical mise-en-scenes without relying on conventional narrative structures. He invents a stylistic language that condenses complex histories into freshly witnessed scenarios. The viewer is able to experience the stories of native colonization free from familiar tropes. There are no feathers, buffalo, dancers or spirit animals for example, although he respects those visual representations. Each painting is autonomous while also part of a series. The co-mingling of suffering, beauty, humor, vulnerability, and compositional elegance distinguishes Antell's work. 

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Antell earned his BFA at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in 1976, followed by an MA from UW-Superior. His time at CalArts coincided with a potent chapter in the school’s history in which the art faculty included Elizabeth Murray, Judy Pfaff, John Baldessari, Pat Steir, and Lynda Benglis. Antell credits professors Murray, Pfaff, John Mandel, and Jim Starrett as important influences.