Painter Tom Hoitsma sits inside his newly opened Dallas Design District studio.

Tom Hoitsma’s artistic career has proved long and winding. However, the route to his latest body of work was clear and direct. After a tornado whipped through his Dallas neighborhood in 2019, Hoitsma and his daughter went out to survey the damage. “It was like a war zone,” he remembers. “You see these things on television, but to actually stand in front of your neighbor’s house that has been destroyed, it’s different.”

Through the wreckage, the artist’s eyes landed on scraps of aluminum gutters, which he then brought back to his studio. Hoitsma bent and colored the pieces to resemble abstract hearts. “I started shaping and repainting them in incredibly joyful shades, inspired by the resiliency of the human spirit,” he recalls.

Hoitsma's collection of “The Heart of the Matter” sculptures feature bent and dented metal painted in in high-gloss hues.

Hoitsma's collection of “The Heart of the Matter” sculptures feature bent and dented metal painted in in high-gloss hues.

Inside his studio space, visitors can glimpse traces of the artist's process, including his favorite paints and brushes.

Inside his studio space, visitors can glimpse traces of the artist's process, including his favorite paints and brushes.

Hoitsma uses tools to bend and shape pieces of metal to form the base for his sculptural artwork.

Hoitsma uses tools to bend and shape pieces of metal to form the base for his sculptural artwork.

Hoitsma is known for abstract oil-on-canvas pieces, as seen here in his “Deconstructed” series.

Hoitsma is known for abstract oil-on-canvas pieces, as seen here in his “Deconstructed” series.

While metal wall sculptures might seem like a departure from the large abstract paintings Hoitsma is known for, they are something of a return for the artist. As a student at Skidmore College in upstate New York, Hoitsma concentrated in sculpture. He interned for the feminist artist Miriam Schapiro and worked at Barbara Gladstone’s Manhattan gallery, but he became disillusioned with the city’s 1980s art world. And so, Hoitsma moved to Texas and began producing television and making music instead. Years passed before the visual arts called him back, and he began making art again in the form of painting. He might have returned to sculpture sooner, but it took time to get a studio and the necessary tools to do the work.

Once Hoitsma developed the new metal series, it superseded his painting. He refined the process, finding a fabricator to make metal pieces that mimic the dimensions of the gutter he’d originally scavenged, which the artist then bends and hammers to create a continuous tangle.

“They have an M.C. Escher quality to them,” he observes. “There’s no beginning or end.” Hoitsma also found an automotive paint maker to mix custom colors. “I want them to be super shiny and glossy, like jewelry, to really catch the light,” he says. The sculptures were partially responsible for the recent move of his studio, Hoitsma Art, to a new location within the Dallas Design District, which also acts as a gallery.

Five years after the storm, Hoitsma is still iterating on the continuous metal forms. “This is the way I respond to turmoil,” he shares. “Taking something that’s bashed up and confusing, and then trying to create joy from of it.”

PHOTOS: JUSTIN CLEMONS