Artist Tom Mahady says his work is all about love.
Not necessarily what he loves but what his clients love: their horses, their children, their towns.
“He seems to make a connection between an animal and its owner in a way that is just incredible,” said Patti Mehling of Warrenville, who has commissioned Mahady to paint four portraits for her. Mehling has four horses and said she was astonished at the amount of time Mahady spent studying and getting to know his subjects before he even started painting.
“He was getting to understand the horses, watching them in their own environment, taking photo after photo of them, just finding out about them. I’ve never seen anybody who took that amount of time,” she said.
Mahady, who specializes in family and animal portraits as well as murals, has been commissioned to paint a mural inside the municipal building about the city of St. Charles and its history.
“There was never any doubt in my mind that Mahady was the artist to paint this mural,” said Jo Krieger, chairman of the government operations committee that asked five artists to submit designs for the mural, which will be painted on a two-story wall connecting the old municipal center with a newer addition.
It was clear that Mahady had done his homework on the town when he submitted his drawing. It contained detailed sketches of famous landmarks in town, such as the Arcada Theatre and the Baker Hotel, as well as portraits of people important to the town’s history.
“He just seemed to capture the spirit of the city and put it down on paper,” Krieger said. “Something drew me right to his submission.”
Mahady grew up on the East Coast and moved to the Midwest in 1991. Since that time he has garnered a local following of people who have commissioned him to do portraits, but his mural work has really taken off lately. Walls covered with his paintings can be found in places such as McChesney & Miller grocery store in Glen Ellyn, Villa Verona restaurant in Geneva and the Glen Ellyn Brewery in Glen Ellyn. He is just finishing a mural inside Depot Express, a coffee shop and deli at the Geneva train station.
“He brings a lot of enthusiasm and imagination to his job,” said Barry Sobotka, owner of Depot Express. The wall mural here portrays the history of Geneva, the importance of the railroad to its development and images at the end of the line, in Chicago.
“We’re out here on the edge of cornfields, and I wanted a transition from suburbia to downtown. He’s doing a very good job. He’s very detail oriented, including a lot of things I wasn’t expecting, like a view down Michigan Avenue and the Picasso. But he does a good job of blending it all together.”
Kermit Ludwig Sr., owner of McChesney & Miller, said he liked the personal touches Mahady put in the mural that hangs over the butcher shop of his grocery store. Mahady captured the history of the store, as well as members of the family who work there today.
“Four generations of my family have worked to keep the tradition of this store (which opened in Glen Ellyn in 1862), and his mural reflects that,” Ludwig said. “We get an awful lot of comments on it.”
Mahady grew up in Connecticut and attended Southampton College in Long Island, N.Y., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in fine arts. He went on to get a master’s degree at Hunter College in New York City.
He always knew he wanted to be an artist, ever since he played with paper and pencil as a child at his mother’s knee in church.
“I was born to do this. It’s in my blood,” he said, noting that his father had art training in Scotland and did specialty custom interior home painting to earn a living.
While in New York, Mahady concentrated more on fine arts painting, experimenting with combining different styles and mediums. He sold a few pieces and had his work featured in a few galleries in the East Village, but after the rest of his family (his parents, four brothers and sister) moved to the Midwest, he decided to move to be near them.
That involved finding a whole new set of clients. He started out by attending local horse shows because he had always enjoyed that in Southampton.
“I also liked George Stubbs, who painted the British royal family’s horses in the 18th Century and did great anatomical study. I loved his refinement,” Mahady said.
He began to do some paintings of horses and portrait sketches to rebuild his portfolio. Then the owner of a store in Glen Ellyn asked him to sketch the exterior of his shop.
“That opened me up to scenes of Glen Ellyn,” which he began producing and eventually turned into a calendar that he sold locally. Meanwhile, he began to get commissions for portraits of children and animals. This year he had enough horse drawings to make a calendar of them. Patti Mehling’s picture with her horse, Sweetheart, is on the cover.
“I was totally surprised when he put me on the calendar. It was very flattering,” Mehling said.
Mehling’s daughter, Julie, is also in the calendar, shown swimming with their young horse named Regalito.
“Tom had spent several days with her, and she had said she had been taking the horse regularly in the pond with her on hot days, and he said, `Why don’t you do it? I’d love to see it,’ ” said Patti Mehling, adding that people don’t usually see pictures of people swimming with their horses. “This kind of portrait brings out the best in my daughter as well as the animal.”
Since Mahady has been in the Midwest, he has had solo exhibitions at Elmhurst College, Aurora University, the University of Illinois at Chicago and Two Illinois Center in Chicago and has been part of a group show at the John Hancock Center. He has taught classes at Wheaton College and Judson College in Elgin.
What stands out in Mahady’s work is the fine level of detail and his use of bright colors. He calls it “clear realism.”
“I use a lot of primary colors and bathe it in a lot of white; that way it’s not dark looking,” said the artist, who is single and works and lives at his studio in Glen Ellyn.
He enjoys the diversity of his work, the fact that he can be working on a portrait during the day and a mural at night.
“I would like to do more fine arts work, crazy stuff, but the murals are important,” he said. “They are a permanent display. It’s art that goes to the people whether they’re grocery shopping or getting a cup of coffee.”
Mahady is aiming for a mid-April finish date on the St. Charles mural. He wants it to be educational and hopes the city will provide binoculars so that people who view it will be able to see the detail in the painting, since it will be large, 12 to 15 feet high.
“Looking at it should be fun as well as educational,” he said.
Mahady sums up his work as a celebration of people’s lives, the small things in their lives, their day-to-day relations with one another, their towns and their pets — what they love.
“It’s all about love,” he said.
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Mahady’s work will be at Borders Books & Music at Clark and Diversey in Chicago until March 8, and he also has work on display at Gallery 129 1/2 on State Street in Geneva and the Sandwich Opera House in Sandwich, Ill. His calendars are available at Barrington Saddlery in Geneva and Barrington, the Hinsdale Tack Shop in Downers Grove, the Wayne Country Store in Wayne, the Depot Express in Geneva and The Book Store in Glen Ellyn.
