John Thompson

As a child growing up in South Bend, Indiana, John Thompson had dreams of becoming a Major League Baseball star. Though his father was an artist and early mentor, Thompson didn’t take formal art courses until college, where he discovered he could paint better than he could hit a curve ball.

In 1962, Thompson graduated from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio with a BFA in painting. His love of art and travel has taken him to museums around the world, inspiring some of his favorite pieces of work.

For eight years, Thompson worked as an art director in the world of advertising, before returning to painting and illustration. His realistic style has remained consistent over decades of changing artistic fads, earning him featured profiles in Communication Arts magazine and inclusion in the book Two Hundred Years of Illustration, as well as the Society of Illustrators’ Hamilton King Award in 2006.

As a children’s book illustrator, Thompson has won several American Library Association Notable Book awards, and had the opportunity to work with two of his favorite clients, Creative Editions and Scholastic. He has also created illustrations for Esquire, the U.S. Air Force, NASA, and Anheuser-Busch, among others.

Today, Thompson works as a painter, illustrator, and professor of art at Syracuse University. He has participated in group and solo exhibitions worldwide, and has travelled with students to India twice as part of the painting and drawing class he teaches about India.

Thompson lives with his wife, Darren, in Syracuse, New York. Dogs at Work, scheduled for issuance in 2012, is his first project for the Postal Service.