Thomas Stiltz was interested in art a very early age, drawing cartoons and portraits in grade school. While in middle school, he won scholarships to art classes at the Delaware Art Museum and studied with a local Delaware artist, Leo Laskaris. From that experience, he learned that a painter could work and support himself through his art.

Stiltz earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1969, and a Masters of Photography in 1971 from the University of Delaware. During his masters program, Stiltz pioneered the use of photographic emulsion applied and printed on various surfaces such as ceramic, glass and plastic. His mixed-media works were exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Crafts and Neikrug Art Gallery in New York, N.Y. during the early 1970’s.

In 1977, Stiltz moved to Baltimore and started a business as a professional photographer and graphic designer. 18 years ago, he began to paint in the medium of oil paint. About that time, 23 of Johannes Vermeer’s known paintings were shown at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. For once it was possible for Stiltz to look closely at the way Vermeer used streaming window light to reveal the mysteries of beautifully clothed women and men, and the objects of their daily lives. He was also struck by the National Gallery’s research that proved Vermeer’s use of the camera obscura, the precursor of the modern camera that Stiltz uses today.

In Stiltz’s paintings, the goal is capture pleasures that relate to the enjoyment of fine wines, fresh fruit, flowers, elegant glass and metals. He uses digital photographic images as the basis for each painting, and creates crisp realism bathed in light, and captured at exacting moments in time. The language of photography influences his compositions. Painters usually start with the canvas space and fill it up with objects, where photographers “crop” reality and decide what to leave in.

Stiltz uses old-world techniques of glazing with layers of rich color to bring great depth to his paintings. This method is very time consuming because of the long drying time between coats of paint. The finished surface is virtually brushless.

Stiltz began painting full time in 2000, showing at galleries in Baltimore, Washington, D.C, and Wilmington, DE. He is now represented in over 40 galleries in the U.S. and Canada. His home and studio are in Ruxton, Maryland where he lives with his wife Sheri. They have two daughters, Jennifer and Julie, who are attending college.