“I can paint in all mediums,” Thomas said. “Screen printing for 40 years, watercolor, acrylics, oils. I’m not trying to brag, but I’ve done it all.”

Thomas’s artistic journey began at a young age when a family friend gave him coloring books each Christmas.

“I was the only kid that got them,” he said. “After a while, I was doing portraits and stuff.”

Self-taught, Thomas discovered fantasy artist Frank Frazetta, whose album covers for bands such as Molly Hatchet inspired him to explore wizards, dragons and other imaginative themes.

Billy Thomas stands beside his bold self-portrait

“Once I got a hold of this whole world, I wanted wizards, dragons,” he said.

He splits his time between Sioux Falls and New Ulm. He lived in New Ulm in the 1980s, working at AMPI, and maintains strong family ties. His daughter, a UCLA Law School graduate, has returned to the area and works remotely. Thomas has two children and five grandchildren.

One piece in the retrospective shows Thomas at his grandfather’s farm in Milbank, South Dakota, standing beside a 1953 Chevy.

“The original photo was me at 22 years old — long hair, looking like this,” he said. “I made it my own.”

For over 40 years, Thomas has worked in commercial art, designing T-shirts, posters and digital illustrations. His work includes brewery murals for Schell’s Brewery and graphics for New Ulm’s former Blues Festival, which featured performers such as Koko Taylor, Roomful of Blues and Big John Dickerson.

Visitors view Billy Thomas’s paintings during The Grand’s closing reception Friday, Nov. 21.

Much of his recent work comes from photographs taken while traveling between Sioux Falls and New Ulm.

“I take pictures of everything,” he said. “If I stop and go, ‘OK, let’s do this,’ it’s too composed. But when you’re just going, 40 pictures might be good or none of them.”

The exhibition featured landscape studies, pen-and-ink works, screen printing and oil paintings. One scene Thomas painted was inspired by his drives between Sioux Falls and New Ulm.

One painting holds particular significance: an old whiskey bottle painted by candlelight on masonite in 1983.

“Somebody bought it back then when I was first going to town, and I’d never seen it again,” he said.

Nature factors into Billy Thomas’s work, including his oil painting “Echoes of Stillness,” which evokes a quiet winter landscape.

Even after decades of experience, Thomas admitted to the occasional mischievous streak in his early career.

“I was a bit of a ‘bad Billy’ sometimes,” he said.

Looking to the future, Thomas said he would keep switching his style because it keeps him happy.

Billy Thomas painting of a tricycle shows his use of color and contrast.

Artist Billy Thomas celebrates with this friends during the closing reception for his 30-year retrospective at The Grand celebrating his deep ties.

Artist Billy Thomas points to his painting of his grandfather’s ’57 Chevy.