As a Walt Disney Imagineer for 25 years, Gilleon worked alongside Disney art legend Herb Ryman and dozens of other world-class artists, architects, and set designers to invent the concepts that became EPCOT Center and Disneyland Paris, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and Shanghai theme parks. In the early 1980s, Gilleon moved to Montana and began his fine art career.

On January 16, 2024, Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West debuted Tom Gilleon’s triumphant 90-painting career retrospective, Inner Light: The Art of Tom Gilleon. Raised by a Scottish-immigrant grandfather and Cherokee grandmother in a Florida home with no electricity, the exhibition begins in the 1940s with 5-year-old Tom drawing with a stick in the sand, then follows his development through art studies to illustrating for NASA’s Apollo moon missions, from painting theme park concepts for Walt Disney Imagineering — which has loaned 12 original oil paintings for the show — to creating fine art on his Montana ranch today.

Featuring 90 original works in all, the exhibition also include works on loan from 24 private collectors and the artist himself, along with Gilleon’s revolutionary new digital paintings. A highlight is the world debut of Spirit Catcher, Gilleon’s stunning 22-minute triptych digital painting inspired in part by the fine art photographs of Native Americans taken a century ago by Edward S. Curtis.

Gilleon’s works are held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Western Art Museum in Cody, Wyoming; the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana; the Booth Museum of Western Art in Cartersville, Georgia; the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry; NASA; the United States Air Force; The Walt Disney Company; Universal Studios; and Warner Bros. Studios.

Tom Gilleon was recently honored to participate in the first art exhibit on the Moon by the Lunar Museum of Art (“LUMA”), which created the first NFT in space on the International Space Station. Fifteen digital images of Gilleon’s art were stored on a server and delivered to the surface of the Moon on a SPACEX rocket in March 2025. LUMA is the anchor art museum in a cultural arts center experienced on the Moon in virtual reality. Celebrating Earth’s emerging spacefaring civilization, Gilleon is a founding member of LUMA’s “First Artists.”

Recognized as “Linking the great American artists of the 19th century with today’s Contemporary Western Art movement,” Gilleon was inducted as a founding member in the C.M. Russell Museum Skull Society of Artists in 2015.

Exclusively represented by KingArts art agency, Tom Gilleon artwork is exhibited for sale at https:// www.tomgilleon.art and by private appointment at the Gilleon Fine Art Gallery in Great Falls, Montana. Original oil and digital paintings are also represented by Montana Trails Gallery in Bozeman; FoR Gallery in Whitefish and Big Fork, MT; Cassens Fine Art Gallery in Hamilton, MT; Sanders Gallery in Tucson; and Brennen Fine Art Gallery in Scottsdale, AZ.

Tom Gilleon’s signed and numbered canvas prints are available online at tomgilleon.art and at Legends of The West Gallery in Santa Fe; Montana Trails Gallery in Bozeman; FoR Gallery in Whitefish and Big Fork, MT; Cassens Fine Art Gallery in Hamilton, MT; Hotel Arvon in Great Falls, MT; Festive Living in Victor, ID; Van Dyck Gallery in Boise, ID; Navarro Gallery in Sedona; and Madaras Gallery in Tucson.

Inner Light: The Art of Tom Gilleon exhibited at Western Spirit: Scottsdale’s Museum of the West in Scottsdale, Arizona, from January 16 through August 2024; and at the C.M. Russell Museum in Great Falls, Montana, from November 15, 2024 through March 31, 2025. The retrospective’s 80-page book was designed by award-winning art director Derrit DeRouen, the former Creative Director of Twitter’s Global Brand, and edited by Norman Kolpas, a veteran writer on American and Western art and the author of more than forty books.