Tom on his bike. Photograph: Michael WeeTom Carment was born in Sydney in 1954 and studied at Julian Ashton's Art School in 1973. Tom has been painting landscapes and portraits ever since. He is also a writer whose stories and essays have been published nationally.

During the 1980's he lived overseas for four years, in Africa (Zimbabwe and Zambia) and in France. Tom returned to Sydney in 1988 where he lives with his partner and their three children.

We can see in Tom's work a reportage on his life, the external lived environment through his landscapes and the internal environment and friendships through his portraits. His body of work explores these themes through his choice of medium and sensitive interpretation of light. His pictures are painted and drawn from life.

Tom Carment's work has been shown since 1974 in twenty-three solo and numerous group exhibitions, mainly in Sydney. His work is held in public and private art collections in Australia and overseas including the Art Gallery of N.S.W., the State Library of N.S.W., and the City of Melbourne Art & Heritage Collection.

Tom was the winner of the 2008 Gallipoli Art prize and the 2005 Mosman Art Prize. In 2002 and 2010 he was awarded the Alan Gamble Award (for the best depiction of the built environment) and in 2010, the COFA Art Award. He has been hung in the Archibald Prize eight times, the Wynne Prize five times and the Sulman Prize and Dobell Drawing Prize twice. Tom is a three times winner of the Waverley Art Prize.

His book ‘Days and Nights in Africa’ (written and illustrated by the artist) was published in 1985 (Peter Crayford Public Pictures), and his essays, stories and pictures have appeared in HQ magazine, Heat magazine, the Bulletin and Sydney Morning Herald Good Weekend.

In 2007 Tom completed a major commission for the City of Melbourne to paint, draw and write about the construction of Council House 2 in Little Collins Street. Council House 2 is the 'greenest' office building in Australia. In 2011 he was an artist-in-residence at Taronga Zoo, Sydney.

In 2008 the Tin Sheds Gallery at Sydney University exhibited forty of Tom Carment's building site pictures in a City of Melbourne sponsored show called 'CH2', and the Hawkesbury Regional Gallery at Windsor held a survey of thirty years of Tom's work, entitled 'People, Paddocks, Coastlines'.

In the catalogue for the Macquarie Group Collection, the late Nick Waterlow wrote: 

"Tom Carment's 'Two Mile Paddock, Middleback' and 'Fenceline, Cambalong', both of 1998, are classic examples of his ability to capture with poetic dexterity, and on a conservative scale, the true feeling of a landscape that is quintessentially Australian. There is an understanding in his work of being at one with the scene depicted, something that Fred Williams, through plein air experience, helped pioneer. He is also a most sensitive writer and as John McDonald noted in 1997, "one gains a better appreciation of Carment's pictures from his prose and vice versa." He continued, "his technique allows a subject to emerge with great naturalness. He is a communicator rather than a showman; he does not try to dazzle us, but elicits our sympathy and interest in the world he portrays."

Tom Carment is represented by Damien Minton Gallery

Tom Carment

Tom Painting Don Idle 1999