Thomas wells biography vanderbilt

Born in Washington, DC, in 1945 and raised in Baltimore, John Thomas Wells' art education was a composite of private tutoring, personal experimentation and select university courses. His grandmother, Adelaide Reardon Wells, was a painter.

Her home in Bethesda Maryland was a sanctuary for young Thomas, where he perused her books on drawing and absorbed a sacred respect for creativity.

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During a two-year military assignment in Japan in the mid-1960s, Wells was tutored in Sumi-e, the traditional Japanese brush painting, and oriental calligraphy.

And he had an intimate exposure to Zen Buddhism. The discipline of the oriental brush ushered in his prolific watercolor period.

During the 1970s Wells sold his work on the streets of New York, through the unsanctioned artists' bazaar in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and then later through Benwai Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts.​

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In the early 1980s, Wells apprenticed with Benoit Gilsoul, a Belgium artist, who wa