Bayou Artist | Tom Byrd

Article by C. Doughty | Photography by Kelly Moore Clark

Tom Byrd’s art is shaped by the open fields, family influences, and creative lessons that defined his Louisiana childhood. Through loss, reflection, and an ever-evolving passion for seeing things deeply, he’s built a body of work that connects memory, emotion, and place in ways both personal and universal.

Monroe artist Tom Byrd grew up near the Mississippi River in Sondheimer, Louisiana, a small farming community about 10 miles north of Tallulah along the northern border of Madison Parish. As a farmer’s kid, Tom spent his childhood surrounded by wide open fields of soybeans, corn, and cotton. These fields changed color depending on the season and crop patterns, but their expansiveness always inspired a sense of freedom and curiosity, which are excellent fuel for creativity. Still today, seeing Louisiana farm land always brings back very fond memories for him. “I always hold that background close to my heart,” he said.
As an artist, Tom is mostly self taught, but he grew up amidst other artists in an environment that fostered creativity and exploration. Tom’s mother was an artist as were her brothers. She painted with oils a lot when he was young, so making art was a natural part of his life. “I definitely get the artistic talent mostly from her side of the family,” Tom said, but he also found support from his father. Both of his parents supported anything he pursued when it came to art. As a result, he found himself drawing and sketching all the time when he was a kid. “Many times I was drawing during class when I probably shouldn’t have been,” he said, “much to the chagrin of some of my teachers.”
It’s possible Tom’s natural inclinations would have led him to continue exploring art independently and that he would have become an adult artist on his own, but his parents decided to nurture his talent and interest with drawing lessons when he was in sixth grade, which made an unquestionable impact on his development as an artist. The instructor was a local artist in Tallulah that he knew as Ms. Susan. Although she worked in a variety of media herself, she taught Tom in pastels, charcoal, and pencil.
During adolescence, kids are often more impressionable. It’s a time when they’re discovering and defining who they are. During this time, Susan made a lasting impact on Tom by showing him how an artist sees and how to be a diligent artist. “She taught me to draw what I see,” he said, “not what I think I see and that was important to have that discipline, and I’ve always taken that lesson and that message with me from that point on.”

After high school, Tom decided to allow other interests to take precedence in his life. He chose to study zoology and physiology at what is now the University of Louisiana in Monroe, and at the time, he wasn’t entirely sure what he would do with his degree. But he later learned that physical therapists were in high demand, and in the early 1990s, he went on to become a physical therapist through Louisiana State University’s School of Allied Health. He’s been practicing as a PT ever since.
Along the way, Tom said he continued to dabble in art here and there, drawing and sketching when inspiration struck, but he didn’t truly submerge himself into the world of art making again until 2011 when his oldest sister passed away in an accident. “I just picked up a paintbrush and started painting,” he said, “and call it an outlet, I guess, but that’s when I started painting.” Tom had never picked up a paintbrush and had never really used color because he felt he didn’t know enough about color or color theory. “But,” he said, “something just sparked, and I just started a painting.”

First, he experimented with watercolors and acrylics on small-scale projects, but eventually, he branched out and began painting on larger canvases and using oils. “I just tried a lot of different things,” he said, “and didn’t look up any instructions.” He just started putting the subjects he preferred on canvas and followed the same basic rules he used when drawing with graphite or charcoal. This process of exploring and experimenting led to new insights. Tom said, “I realized mixing colors wasn’t that difficult, and to some degree, I realized that working with paints was more forgiving than pencil.” He found it was a little easier to fix small mistakes with paint, but he also continued to draw.
He just approaches the two genres differently. “I like both,” he said, “but one thing I quickly realized is that when you’re drawing something with a graphite pencil or charcoal, what you’re rendering on your surface is the absence of light. You’re removing the light, so what you’re doing is creating a rendering of your subject by showing the shadows. If you don’t have any shadows, there’s nothing to draw for the most part, or there’s no contrast. But with paint, you’re doing both. You’re actually creating shadows as well as light, so that’s interesting.” He explained that you can have light in a drawing as well, but the paper itself is the brightest thing on the page. “There’s just a different mindset with those different mediums,” he said.
When Tom immersed himself in making art again after his sister died, it remained something he did in his off time to process his grief. Although his day job as a physical therapist isn’t directly related to drawing or painting, Tom occasionally finds that the two endeavors overlap or complement each other. He may find himself drawing out exercises for his patients when the exercise database he uses falls short. He’s also found that his deep knowledge of human anatomy helps when he chooses to depict human subjects in his art and that the keen observation skills he’s developed in both vocations tend to enhance each other, making him a better artist and therapist.

Although Tom’s day job is all about helping others heal and restoring physical function, making art has taught him that the creative process can be healing too, especially in the way it takes the mind off other things. It allows the artist to transmute their pain, grief, or other difficult emotions into something else entirely. That new creation might be beautiful, but it might also be weird or strange. It might not even make sense, but in a way, the new creation becomes a vessel for the emotions that were felt, even in the background, as the art was created. “When I’m working on a painting, I somewhat lose myself, and I lose track of a lot of things,” Tom said. “When you’re in a painting, you even lose track of time, and you’re just heavily focused on the task at hand. And I think that task and those methods you used to create a painting are somehow therapeutic. It definitely feels like you’re almost meditating.”
The period of intense painting that followed his sister’s death helped Tom grow as an artist. Along the way, he made connections with other artists, gleaning support and, at times, direction from them. One of these artists was Pat Guerriero. “She became somewhat of a mentor to me,” Tom said. According to Tom, Pat had taught an art class at the Council on Aging in West Monroe and had been involved in the art world for a long time. “She always had good advice for me,” he said. She had years of experience in marketing and selling her art, so she always had practical advice about how and where to sell.
Once, she also invited Tom to an artist retreat where he met another local artist who proved to be influential, Don Cincone. “One thing Mr. Cincone stressed and I fully agree with is that if you have a chance to look at your subject a little more, then take the time to do that.” He encouraged all artists to examine their subjects fully and to slow down and not be in too much of a hurry to get started. Tom believes it’s important to develop mentally what he calls a “conversational knowledge” of his subject. “I have to be able to critically describe what I’m seeing and what I am about to paint,” he said. “And if I can’t describe it thoroughly, then I need to look at it some more.”

Through a pattern of self-inquiry, Tom essentially takes himself through much of the drawing and painting process mentally before he begins. Without completing this step, Tom said the quality of his work would be compromised. “I think it’s a very good challenge for all artists,” he said, “and it makes you honest with yourself.” It helps ensure that you draw or paint what you see, and not what you think you see, which is important to him.
For Tom, each painting unfolds through a careful balance of precision and intuition. Each piece begins with structure, a framework, as he describes it, “like building a house.” He makes sure the foundation is sound before allowing the work to evolve. Early in the process, he studies the composition closely, asking himself whether what he sees strengthens or distracts from the heart of the piece. If something feels off, he’s unafraid to pause, step back, and even paint over what he’s done. Once the form feels true, the real joy begins, the quiet, meditative work of adding details that breathe life into the piece. That balance between control and openness, between knowing when to build and when to let go, would come to shape not only his paintings but the course of his development as an artist.
In the years following his sister’s death, Tom matured a lot as an artist and created quite a collection of work. People who saw it were complimentary and often encouraged him to consider finding a gallery to represent him. With a little legwork and a series of artist connections, Tom was put in touch with Ricky Sikes, curator of the Big Room Gallery at the time. Sikes had Tom bring in some samples of his work and agreed to give him two walls. That was in 2015. What Tom gained from the experience was surprising. In the end, it wasn’t really about selling his work. Instead, it was about having fun and connecting with other artists and art enthusiasts.

As an artist, connection is important to Tom—connection to himself, to his subjects, to other artists, to those who appreciate art, and even to his own history and sense of place. “I get a lot out of it. I get a lot out of the process of creating a painting or a drawing,” he said. “I also really enjoy talking with other people about what I do. I greatly enjoy talking with other artists and looking at their work and asking them questions, so there’s just a lot of dimensions to this that have been very rewarding for me.” Tom typically draws and paints people and places in a photorealistic style, although his style leans more impressionistic at times. Because he works primarily from photos, photography has also become a favorite pastime, and many of the people and places Tom captures and depicts reside here in Louisiana.
Tom said he wouldn’t necessarily consider himself a distinctly Louisiana artist, but there are elements of his work that speak to his southern roots. “I think Louisiana as a whole is such a melting pot of a state if you look across the whole state, and there’s a lot of creativity all around us,” Tom said. “And a lot of that is from being that melting pot of many different cultures from all over the world.” From Tom’s perspective, Louisiana is a place where everybody brings their own style and culture, and because of that, everyone fits in, and everyone is connected. “I know I’m influenced by a lot of folks,” he said. “I know quite a few artists around the Monroe area and some from the New Orleans area, and everything I see at least on a subconscious level has to have some influence on me.”

We are all to some extent products of our environments and our experiences, but there are always opportunities to create something wholly new and different. Tom has done quite a few commissioned pieces, especially portraits, which are guided at least partly by the commissioners, but one motif that sets Tom apart in much of his uncommissioned work is a mechanical fish or sometimes multiple mechanical fish that always seem out of place in their environment. They might be hovering over cotton fields or swimming through a celestial abyss, but the fish don’t have a particular meaning to Tom. He said he prefers to leave the meaning-making to viewers, but the fish are based on a little brass bottle opener that he believes used to belong to his dad. “It’s a real curious little thing,” he said. Tom’s favorite thing about his fish paintings is the contrast between the fish and their environments. “I’ve always challenged myself to steer in a little different direction from some traditional things for what it’s worth,” he said. And the fish paintings certainly do that successfully.

Tom said sometimes people aren’t sure what to think of the fish paintings, and that’s okay. He said, “In some of my paintings, I’m expressing something for myself that I may not be able to express in words.” He doesn’t expect viewers to make sense of his paintings or to see what he sees. At the same time, he believes art doesn’t always need to be understood. It can be felt instead, but when it is understood, it can hold different meanings for different viewers. “If you look at a painting, it doesn’t always have to be something that you’re going to fully understand,” he said. “But if it makes you think a little bit, then that’s worth something. At the end of the day, I think if you just stand and look at a painting and spend some time, you will get something, each person will get something, out of that painting that’s a little different from the next person.”
For Tom, the act of painting is more than a personal pursuit. It’s a conversation between artist, artwork, and viewer. “It’s just nice to start with a blank canvas and see the stages of a painting coming to life,” he said, “and then to see how it brings joy to other people to get that painting I can create for them.” Each mark or brushstroke becomes a way to reach outward, to translate emotion into something that resonates beyond himself. “I think anything that allows a person or society to better express themselves is always a good thing,” he said, “because that expression is a form of communication, and communicating more never hurt anybody.” In Tom’s work, art becomes both language and conduit. It becomes a means of connecting hearts, histories, and human experience through the process of creation.