| Ralston C. Thompson | ||
| Birth Date: March 28, 1904 |
||
| Death Date: 1975 Artist Gallery |
||
| In his own words, Ralston Thompson, an only child born March 28, 1904, wrote the following statement in 1974:
“Mother and Dad ran off to Greenup, Kentucky, to get married, much to the displeasure of both families who didn’t like each other anyway. They had a rough time, Dad with no trade, except of course painting, and then he developed a slight case of painter’s colic (lead poisoning). He worked at various things, but ended up, because he had to be in the open air, with the Detroit, Toledo and Ironton Railroad, eventually becoming a locomotive engineer. He was a patient, soft-spoken man in every way except when trying to repair or build something and it would go against him. He was also violently passionate concerning anyone who cheated, stole or lied. Mother was a very strong-willed, even dominating person with a fierce pride. Neither of them ever tried to force me into a particular career and was always sympathetic about my drawing and painting."
“Dad taught me a very good point about painting, or, I suppose, about life. He watched me painting one day—a still-life where I was exhaustively trying to detail. He must have become impatient because he said, `Ralston, you don’t give much credit to whoever will look at that for being able to see or for being intelligent. Leave something for them’. I hope the comment rubbed off. It has stuck with me since then. By the time I was sixteen I had read all of the art books in the Warder Library of interest to me”.
In his high school and Wittenberg Academy years, Thompson served an apprenticeship in a commercial art agency. His weekly wage was $45.00. Thompson continued his art education at the Dayton Art Institute and completed his graduate studies at Ohio State followed by a teaching career there from 1935-1941. He became a professor at Wittenberg in the fall of 1941 and retired in 1969. Throughout his career, his favorite areas of inspiration were consistently the coasts of Maine, Florida and Mexico.
|
||