When Tom Stem paints, he combines two passions – art and tennis.
Stem began playing tennis when he was 16, and today he’s a tennis pro at Lakewood Country Club. But when he’s not on the courts, you can probably find him painting in his M Streets-area apartment.
“I was just looking into doing something creative,” Stem says of the hobby he began four years ago. “I’m sort of surprised how my heart got into it right off the bat.”
“It’s so important to me. It’s something that I feel I should have been doing years ago.”
The 35-year-old Stem draws at least 30 minutes daily and devotes about 20 hours weekly to painting and drawing. He enjoys doing still-lifes, but he also has a series of surrealistic-style paintings devoted to tennis and styled after Belgian painter Rene Magritte’s work.
Stem’s paintings hang in the Lakewood Country Club Pro Shop and are printed on T-shirts and sweatshirts sold at tennis shops throughout Dallas.
“It was a way to combine the two, tennis and art,” Stem says. “The surrealists fire an imagination.”
Stem’s individual works have hung in galleries, but he hopes someday to have a one-man show. Stem says he enrolls in drawing and painting classes to meet other artists, and he believes anyone can paint and draw.
“It’s just like everything else, it’s practice,” Stem says.
He hasn’t marketed his items, and he probably wouldn’t have stuck with the hobby without the support of his friends and his boss, Bill Bos.
“There are so many people interested in art in East Dallas and Lakewood,” Stem says.
News & Notes
NEW DANCE COMPANY: Neighborhood resident Michael Woolsey has started the American Dance Theatre, a new company of local dancers and choreographers. Woolsey hopes to turn American Dance Theatre into a touring company featuring modern, jazz, theatrical and neoclassical choreography. The company’s first performance will be April 1-2 at 8 p.m. at SMU’s McFarlin Auditorium. For information, call 826-4626.
