thomas ferrella - multi-disciplinary, autodidact, madison, wi artist working in burnt wood, film, large scale installations, oil painting, sculpture and music

Exploration is the simplest way to assay his work.

Thomas Ferrella is a recovering Emergency Medicine Physician who speculates in a variety of artistic mediums, conceptualizing a piece or body of work based on visual clues and their subsequent sensory perception. The material often guides the message, and in this way can be seen as a vessel for the purpose the work ultimately serves. Photography has been the foundation though he willfully strays into music, video, painting, large-scale installations, sculpting in wood and found objects. Common threads exist although he considers that irrelevant. His aesthetic is a natural abstraction, a graphic documentation, a personal dialogue, an invitation to poetry.

He resides in Madison, WI. and has participated in a Carl Wilkens Fellowship, nominated by TIME for a “can’t miss” photography show at the Gage Gallery [Chicago] in 2016, won an NBC award for his 30-year photo-documentary work of roadside memorials titled Not Forgotten, premiered his 1 WORLD project in Camaguey, Cuba in 2017. He has performed with his band You Of All People along with 4 of his films [MindStorm, Ghost Wars, Shadowlands, Mad Dreams of Reason] at the MMSD Planetarium [Madison]. His second film Shadowlands was a commissioned piece that was showcased in Paris and Chicago. A recent multiple-billboard installation from his DRIFT series was co-sponsored by Adams Advertising and was installed throughout Dane County in the spring of 2025. Also in 2025, he published The Comic Opera which is a limited-edition artist book of his poems and photographs.

Ferrella uses beauty as an irresistible attractant to draw the viewer into his message. And sometimes that message is simply just that – beauty, for example, his Insex paintings and the photography series In the Key of Dreams. He also explores hard-hitting political/environmental issues in his embroidery work with money, Chief of Sinners Though I Be, poetry – The Comic Opera, and paintings – The Illusion of Permanence and FUCK series.

His work has been showcased on several media programs like WPR’s Central Time, WORT, WMSE and NBC 15. A photo essay of his Not Forgotten roadside memorial series was published in Wisconsin People and Ideas magazine, and several interviews have appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, The Isthmus etc. The Associated Press has picked up on several of his projects over the years.

He is also known in small circles for running his non-profits — BlueStem Jazz and The Aralina and Frank Depolo scholarship foundation. And he has financially supported many Wisconsin DNR, Aldo Leopold Foundation, Wisconsin State Parks and Ice Age Trail conservation and infrastructure projects.