PORT TOWNSEND — The late artist Tom Wilson was among those responsible for the artistic growth of Port Townsend in the 1960s and the town’s transformation into a cultural center, according to those who knew him or his work.
“Port Townsend was always an art community, but Tom brought about a professional renewal,” said Mary Coney, a longtime friend.
“If he had not come here, we would not have the same Port Townsend.”
Wilson died Dec. 20 at Swedish Hospital in Seattle surrounded by friends. He was 84.
He was buried in a private ceremony at Lake View Cemetery in Seattle on Thursday.
A funeral mass will be held at 11 a.m. Jan. 29 at St. James Cathedral, 804 Ninth Ave., in Seattle.
Wilson, Coney said, “took to Port Townsend as if it were extended family.”
He came to Port Townsend by bus when he was 29 years old in July 1960 for a weekend visit and stayed 14 years, according to an account Coney prepared for the Peninsula Daily News.
“Tom Wilson was here at the right time,” said Bill Tennent, Jefferson County Historical Society executive director.
“He arrived in Port Townsend when there was a perfect storm of new interest in historical preservation, art and literature.”
Wilson’s arrival followed after travels to Japan and Spain and earning a master’s of fine arts at the University of Oregon where he “experienced a freer, less traditional atmosphere among the faculty and fellow students,” Coney said.
As a graduate assistant, he moved to Santa Fe for administrative experience at the New Mexico Museum of Art, but learned that he was ill-suited to the heat, the sunshine and the role of a museum director, according to Coney’s statement.
Shortly after arriving in Port Townsend, he moved into an apartment in uptown where he paid $20 monthly rent, which did not change during the time he lived there.
He taught, lectured and painted portraits of residents in exchange for food money.
“Anybody who was anybody in Port Townsend at that time had their portraits painted by Tom Wilson,” Tennent said.
“To this day, these portraits are prized possessions of many local families.”
One of these is of longtime Port Townsend resident Ann Welch, 64. Wilson painted her when she was 11 years old.
Wilson moved to Seattle in 1974 “because he had become too big for Port Townsend,” Tennent said.
The Jefferson County Historical Society owns about 10 of his paintings, which are now in storage after a six-month Wilson exhibition that included another 19 pieces on loan.
“He could have chosen to leave his work to a major museum in Seattle but he chose to leave it to the people of Jefferson County, as this town meant a lot to him,” Tennent said.
Coney said that Wilson was a confident painter and created “many strong landscapes; at the same time he was “socially insecure.”
“He was an old-fashioned gentlemen and belonged to his era,” Coney said, adding that he had a “moral fierceness” and held his friends to a high standard.
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Jefferson County Editor Charlie Bermant can be reached at 360-385-2335 or cbermant@peninsuladailynews.com.
