Artist Tom Powers’ artwork has been shown extensively. His varied background includes installing museum shows and performing punk rock in New York, animating computer games, illustrating books, and teaching digital arts. He currently lives in Mexico.
With the pandemic in full swing, Tom Powers began a series investigating themes of death and the afterlife using black and white linoleum prints: Hell, Bardo, The Age of Kali, and The Peaceful Kingdom. He wanted to create colorful, large format prints that would have the same impact as paintings. So, he began to focus on a seminal literary classic, Dante's Inferno. He has currently completed the first 13 Cantos, about half of which were exhibited at the Institute of Art and Culture of Celaya, Mexico in 2022. The one of a kind, six-by-eight-foot relief prints on canvas are produced from wood plates by hand rubbing.
While at MacDowell, Tom completed nine, full-size charcoal drawings. The drawings will be used for the start of the initial carving for the plates. When the series is completed there will be 34 Cantos, each nine-by-six-feet in size.
