I love the continued interest in Night Gallery. Goes to show, good stuff hangs on. People don't forget. Every now and then I run into someone who realizes that I'm the painter of NG and there's a lot of interest and questions.

I was always looking for the spooky or creepy images. Anything a bit off and every painting approached with a different treatment. As I remember....creating the paintings came from short stories or scripts...I would read the story, gather my thoughts, start making some thumbnails then pick a couple I would like, take them to Jack Laird and he would say: Do the one you like Tom. He was great to work with. What ever I liked would be a go. So....I would pick the one I preferred and off I would go.

Which paintings am I most proud of ? There's a few. I think the most favorite would be the ones that I used my daughters as models. The Boy Who Predicted Earthquakes, then Little Girl Lost. That's my youngest daughter. Brenda was my oldest daughter. Then there was Jack Laird...Quoth the Raven. Rod Serling....Midnight Never Ends. Used myself as models on a couple, Die Now, Pay Later was one.

I did layouts (very small) for the paintings mainly for myself. I had a very special situation in that I had final approval on any painting I wanted to do.

I would do two or three ideas on the story, but always would put the one I was going to do on top when I presented them to Jack Laird. His answer was 'GREAT,' go to it.

I had time. Mainly my time was spent developing the ideas. Once I had that down, (they were very well worked out) I decided which one I would do for the episode and the final execution usually went rather fast.

There are about 3 or 4 of the paintings out of the 100 or so I did that I did not do. There's also one I did which is in the group but for some reason someone changed the face in the painting. [Rare Objects]

Rod liked a lot of the paintings. Of course one of his favorites was the one I used him as the model for...Midnight Never Ends. He was quite pleased.

There was really never any feedback from anyone....just Rod, except of course when they were done. They were always well received. Anyway, I would do the paintings...have them framed for presentation so no one really saw them until they were finished. Jack would see small thumbnails but I really decided what would be done. He left it all to me. The photos which were submitted for Rod to write the openings were small (Polaroids) and with a note from me explaining them. So until you really saw the finished piece it was rather difficult to see all the detail.

THE DEAD MAN
This painting is about the aftermath of death. The human body left to rot undergound. The red background represents hell to the murderer. The white is rather abstract of nothing but bones left. The thing about this that's different is the view of the observer. You're looking at the TOP of the head of the body to the feet.

THE HOUSEKEEPER
Multiple SOULS, ghosts if you prefer....moving in and out of the viewers eye, they not knowing where to look....confusion, mystical. Plus, I liked the drawing exercise.

THE HOUSE
This was done on masonite primed with white acrylic, drawn with a black marker, then painted with acrylic washes.I wanted as much of the drawing to show through as possible. It does.

PAMELA'S VOICE
The man captured in the never-ending sound of Pamela's voice. Trapped in an iron prison is the image: the face of Pamela rendered as metal, the man never able to escape.

THEY'RE TEARING DOWN TIM RILEY'S BAR
The image in the painting is of Tim's face reflected in the multiple facets of a shot glass. I thought it was pretty clever (yuck, yuck). But fun.

THE HAND OF BORGUS WEEMS
This idea is the SOUL tortured and in transition. The colors definitely suggest a negative image. (On purpose.) I look at it as a force that's beyond human control. In perpetual limbo. Always pain.

SINCE AUNT ADA CAME TO STAY
I felt the focus on the eye surrounded in black was looking into the soul. The viewer hopefully had time to catch this. I love close-ups. The coldness is on purpose—Young wife's body—I see as a shell for the witch to occupy.

WITH APOLOGIES TO MR. HYDE
It's [Spencer] Tracy...but I tried to stretch it a bit and make the features even more demonic and there's always the 'blackness'.

THE FLIP-SIDE OF SATAN
Possibly another approach to Satanic Symbolism instead of the usual, and to create a disturbing image for the viewers. They look at this one and say let me the hell out of here. Uncomfortable may be the word. Never let them off the hook.

A FEAR OF SPIDERS
My idea was that after a while Justus had a total paranoia about everything around him. I used the bug-eyed skull cavity encased in the spider web as the prison in his mind. Alas, the fear of spiders. I used the skull as the symbol of death, something that he will not be able to escape. The man in the cavity is Justus.

JUNIOR
Just the idea of a kid like Junior squeezing his favorite stuffed animal to smithereens is a funny image to me. That's why you see what you see.

MARMALADE WINE
Another one of my favorite paintings. Impressionism is my favorite period. This one based lightly on the style of Bonnard. The photographer, as an artist. The still life as a counterpoint. You look and admire the quietness. I felt the still life was in direct conflict with the story line. It's not going anywhere, like if you were a prisoner and had no feet. Then I played on the title, Marmalade Wine. Guess I just felt creative that day.

A QUESTION OF FEAR
The media was pen and ink, a practice in technique. I like pen and ink and incorporated it into many of the paintings. You just have to look pretty close to see it. I have the thumb-nail for this piece framed in my home. It's one of my favorites.

MIDNIGHT NEVER ENDS
Rod was lonely. Especially, I think, in his work. He was a tough guy but I guess when you're getting beat up all the time it does sort of get to you. He said it was 'neverending.' As in the painting...lonely...forlorn...the darkness...the time neverending was perfect Rod Serling. All I had to hear was the title and I knew right away who the subject would be. He never knew about the painting until I submitted it for the opening dialogue. He loved it. The whole idea of it. He said “you nailed it kid.“ He was very gracious in his thanks.

[question]: “Were you aware that after you did Rod the honor of including him in your painting, story editor Gerald Sanford did him the dishonor of rewriting his entire script?“

[answer]: “I was not aware of the script rewrite but I am not suprised. That was another reason Rod was not very happy with the series.“

THE DIARY
The figure is lost in agony. Frustration over what is happening. Things that are out of control...would make anyone agonize over the cause of not knowing what is happening to them. Holly is constantly reliving the past deaths (represented by the hollow figures filing past in a row over and over again in her mind) I thought this made sense especially after WE find out this has been going on for five years. Holly sitting on the larger than life 'book' also gets across the idea that the book is controlling her life. The color gray subtly gets across another layer of depression.

KEEP IN TOUCH—WE'LL THINK OF SOMETHING
The more you stare at the painting the more you see. I wanted it dark and mysterious, of course, to make you focus on it. We are now observing what is in their lives that has created this moment. They are frozen in time.

PICKMAN'S MODEL
Was a favorite because after designing the monster I was able to work with the make-up people in creating the piece. The concept was totally off-the-wall: a creature that lives in the tunnels, sewers—a creature of the dark and the mind. Jack [Laird] really didn't describe anything. I did a couple of ideas and finally picked this one. It was fun, and at that time for tv and with no money, it came off pretty well.

CAMERA OBSCURA
The skulls are wearing costumes from the period [Victorian English]...granted rather abstract, but there. Floating heads to give no anchor for the poor souls. The mood is to set the image of death (the skulls of course) and what's really out there 'after.' No other ideas were proposed. I liked this one. Rather bizarre and not on the nose.

QUOTH THE RAVEN
The model for Poe in the painting was Jack Laird. The dark colors carry the mood of the piece and of course you have to have the Raven overseeing all.

THE MESSIAH ON MOTT STREET
I just liked the image of the dark lonely apartment on Mott Street. Lonely, dark. The silhouette of the small lonely boy in the window, waiting, as the snowswept “angel of death“ moves around outside his window...waiting. I liked this painting.

A FEAST OF BLOOD
It was inspired by Munch's painting. The expectation of waiting...waiting for death (hopefully transmitted in the expression).

LAST RITES FOR A DEAD DRUID
Man backlit, (one of my favorite images) is the lawyer. Sun as the worship symbol. The figure below in the red boiling sea is Satan, waiting.

STOP KILLING ME
It's loud on purpose. I wanted anxiety from the viewer on this one. That's why the expression, the colors. Everything moving but not moving. Only your eye.

THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
THE TRIPTYCH IDEA: An approach used in many religious paintings. Since this story dealt with 'Sins', I thought it was a good format to involve three different emotions in the one painting. In the three images I was imaging Ian Evans's point of view as he approached the task his mother put upon him to 'eat his fathers sins'. The pain of something like this, especially from a rather simple minded person would probably be quite distorted and traumatic. Also the colors had a lot to do with the emotional impact of the painting. Blacks, reds, blues, the agony on the faces, the tension in the structure of the figures. I'm sure as I read the story there were many more thoughts that came to mind.

[Tom]-There are two figures, a mother with child sitting on her lap. The little girl is holding a doll in her hands. This painting was really a family portrait done for Jack Laird. It's his wife and child. He was going to use it for one of the shows but never got to it. I had it photographed and that's why it shows up with the rest. What looks like a waterfall coming from her shoulder is really a light source. The painting was done in very subtle colors, mainly grays, little color and blacks. Very moody of course. You will notice the doll is in a very strong light source and resembles the mother. Strange. But Jack was strange.

[question]-(An abstract-type painting, with a lot of greens and browns, depicting a small boy leaning his face against his hand as though daydreaming. Surrounding and directly above the top of his head is a large, bluish head of a woman with an angry expression and gaping jaws. To the left of the woman's head is a whitish, leering face with red eyes. This painting was the first one to appear in the third-season opening credits for Night Gallery (in the sequence which showed the paintings rushing towards the viewer accompanied by Eddie Sauter's violent, tuneless music), and was located in the gallery near the bluish painting for The House.)

[Tom]-It centered on a young boy completely dominated by his mother. The images around him were how he perceived her and his hatred for her. About all I can remember. The painting was used to fill the background. We were just trying to change the look of the gallery a bit.

[question]-(A cubist-type painting, done mostly in blues, which shows the stylized, elongated figure of a man holding what looked like a basketball in his hand. This painting seemed to have no frame, and it was located just behind the painting of a clown done for Make Me Laugh and the painting of a blue head for Clean Kills and Other Trophies.)

[Tom]-This was about a man with many problems. He was into sports and actually it was one of my favorite paintings. The style, the colors. Nothing really defining. Just an impression.

[question]-(A small square painting, located immediately behind the "basketball" painting described above, showing a red spatter (perhaps a cloud of flame?) on a white background.)

[Tom]-I may be wrong but it might be of a small child in a blast of red. Very young child and I think the episode was on the funny side, but not sure.

[question]-(A stark painting showing a man, his face obscured by shadow, confined to a strait-jacket against a white background.) [Nightmare Morning]

[Tom]-This is also one of my favorites. A very stark and unsettling image I believe. But I liked it. I liked the technique and style. Very bold.

[question]-(A red and orange painting showing a young, thin, dark-haired woman surrounded by satanic symbols. The outlines of a skeleton are traced over her face and arm.) (This painting was one of the few Night Gallery reproductions released by Universal. They wrongly identified it as the painting for The Return of the Sorcerer.) [possible title might be: Daughter Of Darkness]

[Tom]-The painting was for a show that was not done but then I redid it for another episode which I can't remember the title. Again one of my favorites and it got a lot of play when the cast & crew, saw it framed and hanging in the gallery.

From a Universal publicity pamphlet. All dimensions are in inches.

Pickman's Model = 24 x 32 (framed, 42.5 x 51)
Camera Obscura = 30 x 40 (framed, 48.5 x 58.5)
The Funeral = 21 x 45 (framed, 39.75 x 64)
A Fear of Spiders = 20 x 42 (framed, 38.75 x 61)
The Messiah On Mott Street = 22 x 40 (framed, 41.75 x 58.75)
Death On A Barge = 24 x 40 (framed, 42.5 x 58.75)