Artist and longtime DART subscriber/contributor Thomas Libetti—a transplant from New York City to Western Massachusetts—is known for his striking line-based art that captures gesture and style in seemingly minimalist strokes. With a one-day pop-up show this weekend and an open studios event opening next weekend, I invited him to this email chat, which just came in. 

Peggy Roalf: Where do you live and how does that place contribute to your creative work?

Thomas Libetti: I live in the Berkshires of Western Mass where nature is a big draw and influences my work a great deal. Nature is a default subject matter I turn to in my personal paintings: trees, plants, landscapes and such.

In early summer this year I began collecting foliage that made for interesting forms to paint and use as stencils, transferring their silhouettes onto repurposed surfaces. That series inspired me to do the same with flowers but since flowers are three-dimensional, I drew them with scissors, then used the negative and positive cutouts to create combinations of lilies, echinacea and wild flowers in addition to the ferns and foliage. 

PR: Which came first, the pen or the brush?

TL: Pencils! (I come from an Italian immigrant people who worked with their hands. My dad and grandfather were carpenters and often wore pads and pencils in their breast pockets. The matriarchs of the family worked with their hands too making homemade pastas, cheeses, breads and routinely cooked delicious southern Italian family meals with love.

PR: When did you realize that you were meant to become a working artist?

TL: When I realized I couldn’t quit. I still can’t stop drawing, making and collecting pictures, whether I have a deadline, commission or not.

PR: What are the most indispensable items in your studio?

TL: No wi-fi. And now an Adirondack chair that hosts live sitters like my kids and friends who come in for portraits.

PR: What do you do when you need to recharge the creative flow?

TL: I go for walks and swim in lakes/cold plunge in our small, cold local rivers.

PR: What’s a work of art in any medium that has most influenced your approach?

TL: Of recent, Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.  

PR: I’ve noticed that flowers are recurring images in your personal work. What is the draw for you?

TL; Flowers, plants and trees speak volumes, silently, and offer solace from the monkey mind of the human brain and ego. 

PR: What do you enjoy most about teaching painting and drawing?

TL: Watching a student observe as their awareness adjusts and materializes in the form of marks on a page. Drawing and painting is such a great tool for connecting to the present moment.

PR: What are you doing now, professionally, that you never thought you would do?

TL: I’m open to connecting sharing with people through my work and practice, combining drawing and painting from observation together with mindfulness meditation.

PR: What would your dream project be?

TL: I’ve started painting people in large format from life in my studio. Connecting authentically in live time in this context is exhilarating and hard but rewarding when it works. Healthy social media. The dream is to find proper homes for these works and exhibit them. 

Join Thomas Libetti for a one-night pop-up show and artist talk in a barn, in Great Barrington, MA! If you’re in the neighborhood and want to join the festivities in this private space, please DM @thomaslibetti Thomas is also participating in the 2025 Open Studios at the nearby Alford Artists Collective on August 31, 11am-4pm. Directions

Thomas Libetti is a visual artist and mental health educator living in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. His work has been collected by leaders in the publishing and fashion worlds including editors Anna Wintour and Jay Fielden, fashion designers Manolo Blahnik and Jason Wu, and interior designers, Carrier &; Company. His drawings have been published in major publications in the U.S. and abroad including: Penguin Random House, American Illustration, Atlantic Monthly, Boston Globe, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Rolling Stone, The Wall Street Journal, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review and Vogue Italia, among others. His portraits of world leaders and renowned authors have been commissioned by publishers, Farrar Straus & Giroux and Alfred A. Knopf, and have accompanied The New York Times and LA Times Book Review and Op-Ed sections.

Thomas received an MFA from the School of Visual Arts Illustration As Visual Essay program and a BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology. He later explored concept-based art and attended postgraduate studies in Como, Italy at the Fondazione Ratti’s Advanced Course in Visual Arts, and writing workshops at John Ashbery’s HOMESCHOOL in Hudson, NY. Thomas’s process has since been about aligning raw mark making, text and likenesses without an overworked finish. A former NCAA Division 2 athlete, Thomas champions movement and play together with the practice of drawing from observation. A certified yoga instructor from the Kripalu School of Yoga and Health, Thomas likens the act of observing and noting in mindfulness meditation to that of uninhibited drawing.

Website: https://www.thomaslibetti.com

Instagram: @thomaslibetti