About Tom Seghi

Born and raised in Chicago, Tom Seghi was the first in his Italian-American Catholic family to attend college, Seghi studied at Northern Illinois University (NIU), where he would discover his passion for translating the Midwestern landscape onto canvas.

Originally intending to study architecture, Seghi changed his career path to become an art educator and painter. During his graduate studies at the Art Institute of Chicago, Seghi earned a reputation as an artist to watch. After graduating, he moved to Vancouver, BC, Canada, where he first exhibited his work.

Seghi then settled in Missouri to raise a family and continued to paint while he taught art at local universities including Washington University in St. Louis, Webster College and Southern Illinois University. During that time, he painted large landscapes of the bottom lands by the Mississippi River and the patchwork quilt of farm tracts in the Midwest.

Feeling ready for a change from the land-locked heartland, Seghi moved to Miami in 1988 to launch his sailboat in open turquoise waters and to advance his art career. Juried in by the South Florida Art Center (now known as ArtCenter/South Florida) as a resident artist, he painted prolifically in his studio on Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. During this time, his work was discovered by numerous galleries and was exhibited nationally and internationally.

South Florida’s intense light and color transformed Seghi’s palette and paintings. Shifting from the darker hues of his Midwestern landscapes, his imagery became more colorful and abstract. He played with automatic writing, collages and geometrical shapes which by the mid-90’s, became recognizable vegetables and fruit.

Now known primarily for his fruit paintings, which evolved from spirited forms into hyper-realistic portraits, Seghi’s work continued to develop. His latest work includes a series of paintings featuring his paint tools, some rendered as trompe-l’œil.

Tom Seghi died of a heart attack on a visit to his hometown in July 2011. His immediate survivors include his widow Laya Firestone Seghi, a psychotherapist in private practice in Hollywood, FL; daughter Anniel (Danny Nagler) and twin sons Daniel (Samantha) and Gabriel (Lea), six granddaughters and two grandsons, all living in Florida.