Thomas Tran Is A Wanderer In Art and Life

In 2021, when Thomas Tran was 23 years old, he quit art, left Houston, lived in his car, and wandered America. The goal was twofold. One, he wanted to see the world. Two, he wanted his muse to chase him. 

“If art was meant to be in my life, it would come back,” he said in a phone interview.

It was about three months before the art came calling, and Tran resumed sketching. At just 28, Tran is one of Texas’s best and most mysterious artists. His work is mainly maximalist dreamscapes in pencil that bounce across the paper like a slam dancer with one leg too short. It’s often disturbing, a combination of street graffiti and Hieronymus Bosch Catholicism that vibrates with life and narrative.

He started off a normal artist (whatever that means). Growing up in Alief, he was a “neutral blob” when he finished high school, unsure of what he wanted to do. Once he settled on art, he received a BFA from the Columbus College of Art and Design and seemed poised to pursue a fairly mundane career as an illustrator.

However, Tran’s artistic vision quickly marked him as something eldritch. In 2018, he self-published the book Bubba Stories after a successful Kickstarter run. It began a new tradition of his: wedding stories to illustrations. Like his more interpretive work, it still has a touch of the sinister while also placing childlike protagonists at the focus. You can spend hours looking into the sketches, finding new details every time. 

“I know I have the options of making it candy canes and gum drops, but I lean more horrific because that’s feels more realistic,’ Tran said. “There’s the dark and the gloom and the absurd in life that isn’t planned for, and that isn’t comfortable, and that’s just as important as the pleasant parts.” 

He further elaborated on his artistic approach:

“As it’s being made, I’m listening to a gut feeling, and the feeling is usually telling me it’s stupid or boring or too complicated. It’s not black and white, and it wants me to go in a new direction. At the beginning, it doesn’t make sense, and that’s fine and it’s fun. I’ll hone in on one part, a dog’s face or a cool shoe, and that kind of becomes the first real block of the story. Then the rest of the pieces grow like a web.”

Tran’s career has taken on a predictable unpredictability. He will work for a few months at some job, then take off to explore until he either needs money or space to work again. Currently, he works with autistic kids using AVE therapy, a combination of sound and light frequencies that sooth brain patterns. He’s also been, in no particular order, a volunteer at Buddhist and Hare Krishna temples, a linen truck driver in Yellowstone, a beat masher on the night shift in Idaho, and part of the Douglas Mountain Earthship in Colorado.

When he returns to Houston, it’s often for big projects. He painted the New Alief Community Mural and the Longevity mural in Asiatown. For eight months, he worked creating a room in Meow Wolf, the immersive art experience in Fifth Ward. One of his colleagues at that time was Hannah Bull, one of Houston’s best-known muralists herself. She remembers Tran as a special talent.

“He paints from his dreams, creates collaborative collages of this thoughts and dreams,” she said in a text interview.” Pretty unique. He straddles the line of reality and illusion, a contemporary surrealist.” 

Part of Tran’s secret is his nomadic existence and refusal to be tied down. While he admits that sometimes he just has to stop and make money, he’s moved away from commissions and freelance work. 

Instead, he’s allowed himself to slow down and work at his own pace when it comes to his bizarre canvases. This makes him much less of a social media presence, but lets him concentrate on really getting the weird right.

“I knew the market wanted shorter pieces, but now I’m like f*** it, I might as well do what I like,” he adds. “It takes two or three months to finish a piece, but it’s a lot more rewarding. I’m extremely conscious of the content machine because it could really f*** up my relationship with art.” 

You never know when Tran will disappear for a few months, off on some unlikely adventure far from Houston. One way or the other, he always comes back with new ideas and strange illustrations, and then he dares people to follow him through the maze of his art.