Formerly with Disney Imagineering, Tom Gilleon worked alongside Disney legend Herb Ryman and painted the original design concepts for EPCOT Center and Disneyland theme parks Paris, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. His sophisticated use of colors and luminescence have been described as "magical elegance” and compared by art critics to Edgar Degas and Mark Rothko. As Gilleon approached his 80th birthday in 2020, he wrote himself a letter on an airplane, asking himself, “What if an artist knew his next painting would be his last? What would he choose to paint? How careful would he be to make this one the best he’s ever done? Make every stroke purposeful, effective, and masterful? Would the paint flow effortless or would the tension in the artist’s mind and hand create a bloody battlefield each hour spent creating his final masterwork? Each new MMXX vision work will begin with this: I alone will know the answer, but I intend to begin each new painting as if it’s my last.” And he transitioned to his vision of “MMXX Masterworks”— now painting his finest masterworks. “Looking back, I was probably most influenced by the old era art directors and illustrators, Herb Ryman especially, who had the amazing ability to quickly and simply tell a story or convey a feeling with their artwork. I believe this simplicity and strength is the key to fine art. Light, color, value, composition, and line are paramount in importance.”For the last 40-years, Gilleon has lived in Montana as a rancher and artist in the spirit of Charlie Russell. Now one of the most widely acclaimed and collected artists in the Contemporary Western art movement, Gilleon’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Western Art Museum, the C.M. Russell Museum, Denver Museum of Art, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum, Scottsdale Museum of The West, and Booth Museum of Western Art.In January 2024, the Scottsdale Museum of The West opens a career retrospective of Tom Gilleon artwork—the largest exhibition of a living artist at the museum. With over 70-paintings spanning a 70-year fine art career, the show will include oil paintings he created at Disney Imagineering, past works, and recent MMXX Masterworks. The show will also feature the first NFT created by a Western fine art painter. And in addition to displaying his innovative 20-minute moving digital painting, Fort Mountain, Gilleon will debut a new digital painting, the life-size triptych Shadow Catcher. The show will travel around the country to fine art museums in 2025 and 2026.A PBS documentary, The Art of Tom Gilleon, was produced for national broadcast in 2024.