About Frank Thomas Frank Thomas is an LDS Church historical artist and chronicler of the early American West. He is an avid researcher of the native American Indian people, the pioneers and the wildlife of the Rocky Mountains. He also loves recreating and painting their stories in his medium of choice... acrylic on large canvases. As a boy and a teenager, in mid fifty's Chino, California, Frank always knew he would be an artist, but never dreamed the tools of his trade would one day include an M-16 rifle, grenades and helmet, along with his camera and sketch pad. He even expected making the usual "artist sacrifices" to achieve. However, for most artists, prospects of braving sniper fire in mountainous jungles, helicopter assaults, sloshing through Mekong Delta rice paddies, to research your art, or crossing an Iraqi desert in M-1 Abrams battle tanks aren't exactly the expected sacrifices. In 1960, Thomas married his high school sweetheart, Patreecia Leavitt. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1964 and took a teaching position in rural Beaver, Utah. It was the perfect place to raise his family. Life was sweet! Deer hunting was magnificent! However, winds of change and winds of war were sweeping the world and soon touched even his quiet little mountain town. So, while others plied their arts back home, Thomas' art career took a track few have dared travel.

After serving as a 9th Infantry Division field artillery 105mm howitzer firing battery executive officer (XO) in combat in Vietnam's Mekong River Delta, 1/Lt. Lieutenant Frank Thomas was selected by the U.S. Army Center of Military History (Washington, D.C.) to serve as a combat artist/leader of two combat art teams. Because of the virtual impossibility of painting combat if you don't experience it, for the sake of their art, they entered into jungle operations with many combat units. Their mission was to record combat through the eyes of an artist. Captain Frank Thomas, in 1968, was awarded the Army's Air Medal for helicopter combat assaults as an artist! A distinction no others in the art world can claim. Years of school teaching, business, studio painting, and U.S. Army, Army Reserve and Utah National Guard tours followed. Finally, in February 1991, for one last time, while other artists remained in studio or taught their art, Thomas was recalled from his Delta High School classroom to service in the Persian Gulf as an official US Army Combat Artist for Operation Desert Storm. He worked with M-1 Abrams tank battalions, Bradley cavalry units, and Apache helicopter attack squadrons throughout Kuwait and Iraq to paint and immortalize U.S. soldiers at their finest. Always on the move, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Thomas arrived at the south bank of Iraq's Euphrates River with the 1/1 Cavalry Squadron, 1st Armored Division. Thomas returned to his high school art teaching in Delta. Finally, in February 1999, after 31 years of uniformed service, he retired from the military as an Army officer (Army of the United States). At his Army retirement he was presented with the Order of Saint Barbara, (a British & U.S. Army professional field artillery award), and is the only artist to have ever served as a U.S. Army Combat Artist in two wars.

His sketches and large canvas paintings of Vietnam and Desert Storm soldiers, in their pride and pain, are part of the Army's art collection in Washington, D. C., and the Library of Congress In 1996 he painted two commissioned historical canvas murals commemorating Utah's 100 years of statehood. Thomas' canvas paintings and art prints are found in the collections of professionals, U.S., Army generals, and nationally recognized elected and religious leaders, including President George Bush, Senator Jake Garn, Senator Orrin Hatch, Utah Governor Michael Leavitt and LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley. His large 32 sq. ft. LDS historical canvas painting of Mormon pioneers crossing the frozen Mississippi River, titled NAUVOO FAREWELL: The Exodus Begins, now hangs in the new Nauvoo LDS Temple. His newest 20 sq. ft. canvas painting, The STANDARD of TRUTH, is displayed permanently in the Missionary Training Center (MTC) Provo. Lt. Colonel Frank and Patreecia Thomas in the City of Washington, D.C are the parents of five children, and also grandparents of fourteen. Thomas, now retired from both his military life and his teaching career at Delta High School, claims to have merely changed professions. The rest of his life will be dedicated to pursuit of a professional art career. Thomas continues to produce new U.S. Army commissioned works, Native American Indian, Horse Soldier, wildlife and commissioned LDS historical & inspirational canvas paintings and art prints. He "pushes paints" on large canvas surfaces in his Wildgoose Creek Studio, in a barn loft, in the tiny mountain town of Holden, Utah.