Presents the Tom Loepp & Doug Tunison's CASPER PEOPLE PLACES & THINGS EXHIBITION Aug 1-Sept 30, 2026 at the new CitiWerks Art Gallery Free Admission
Join Us for a Special Event during Art Walk where Tom will be doing a live oil painting of Oliver Soulek, celebrating his win at the Grand Teton Music Festival scholarship competition Aug 6, 2026 6:30-8pm
Plein air artist who works from life in oil paintings, drawings, sketches.
In 1975 while working as a stone mason, Tom Loepp did portrait sketches in a shopping mall in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He then moved to New York City to study at the Art Students League. He eventually taught painting from life there and at the National Academy of Design. In the 1970s he did portraits at night in Greenwich Village. For the next twenty five years he painted New York City scenes and portraits. Some of the notable commissions he painted are Chief Justice William Rehnquist for the U.S. Supreme Court, William and Flora Hewlett for the Hewlett Foundation. He painted on the tops of the Brooklyn Bridge, the World Trade Center, and the Grand Tetons. His plein air city paintings are in White and Case Law Offices and The Museum of the City of New York.
COLLECTIONS
United States Supreme Court, Smithsonian, Washington, DC
United States District Court, New York, NY
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Menlo Park, CA
Campbell's Soup, Camden, NJ
The Museum of the City of New York
Yale University, Hartford, CT
University of Chicago, Chicago, IL
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI
Stanford Law School, Stanford, CA
Adelphi University, Long Island, NY
University of Virginia School of Law, Charlottesville, VA
Barnard College, New York, NY
Phillips Exeter Academy, New Hampshire
Columbia Presbyterian's Babies Hospital, NY
White and Case Law Offices, New York, NY
McCarter and English Law Offices, Newark, NJ
Warshaw Burstein Law Offices, New York, NY
The Colony Club, New York, NY
The Rouse Corporation, Baltimore, MD
Trinity Church, New York, NY
The Church of the Holy Innocents, New York, NY
The Colony Club, New York, NY
The Nicolaysen Art Museum and Discovery Center, Casper, WY
Salmagundi Club, New York, NY
Charles H. McNider Museum, Mason City, IA
Salmagundi Club, New York, NY
Collective Health Trust, Casper, WY
Jimmy Fallon, Tonight Show, NYC
National Museum of Brewing, Kostelec nad Černými lesy, Czech Republic
These images imagine what happens when political loyalty matters more than truth.
I use familiar Casper buildings, streets and institutions, then push them toward neglect, abandonment, and collapse. They are not documentary photographs. They were created in Photoshop using traditional compositing, photographic manipulation, and generative techniques.
The work is about what happens when belief becomes an identity. Facts are accepted only when they support the group. Contradictions are ignored. Opponents become enemies. Loyalty replaces judgment.
Conservatives and liberals both do this. Their symbols differ, but the result is the same: ideology becomes more important than reality.
The ruined buildings, empty streets, flags, crosses and abandoned businesses are metaphors. The structures remain, but their purpose has been lost. The symbols survive after trust, cooperation, and reason are gone.
These photographs ask a simple question: what is left when people no longer care whether their beliefs are true?
Decay. Isolation. And symbols standing over the ruins.
