Evan Swensen

An Alaskan since 1962, Gilmore has been painting and illustrating most of his life. He was born in Texas in 1928, but grew up in Oklahoma during the Great Depression. As a teenager, he traveled, unconventionally, throughout the West from the Mississippi to the Pacific and from Mexico to Canada by hitchhiking and hopping freight trains. Although he was a high school dropout, he returned to school and excelled in art, English and journalism. He attended Oklahoma State University for two years--his studies were in English and Geology. His art training comes from correspondence courses in commercial art and years of practice. For many years he was an illustrator in the oil and aerospace industries. During the 60s he did free-lance design and illustration for the Anchorage Telephone Book, Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Industry Magazine, Concrete Association of Alaska, and various advertising agencies. In 1978 he illustrated and published a calendar of his paintings of Alaska. He has had several one-man shows and has exhibited in galleries in Anchorage and Juneau.A Gilmore painting can be recognized by the brilliant colors he employs, and by his realistic interpretations of present and past lifestyles. He works mostly with acrylic on canvas, although, for a change of pace he may use pen and ink on paper with watercolors for dramatic effect. From 1966 to 1991 he was a scientific illustrator for the U. S. Geological Survey in Anchorage where he was in charge of illustrating, compiling, publishing and distributing scientific publications for Water Resources Division. He recently illustrated Elim--The Determined Athlete by Joan Jackson and In the Light of the Night and the Dark of the Day by Janet Boylan. "