Tom Burckhardt was born in New York City in 1964. He attended SUNY Purchase and graduated with a BFA in painting in 1986, after which he attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His work has been the subject of over thirty solo exhibitions at institutions including the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, TX; the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, NY; and the Knoxville Art Museum in Knoxville, TN. Burckhardt was a participant of the 2016 Kochi-Muziris Biennale in Kerala, India and an artist in residence at the Yaddo Foundation in New York State in 2019 and Pepper House, Kochi, India in 2020. He has received numerous grants and awards, including three grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, a Guggenheim Foundation Grant, two Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grants, and the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy. He currently teaches part-time at SUNY Purchase.