Thomas Hieronymus Towhey aka “2E,” was born in 1958 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Towhey grew up in Milford, raised by a single mom, with two sisters and one brother. He was highly competitive from an early age, but his aspirations as an athlete ended when he was injured in a car accident at the age of 16. From that day onward his full attention and passion focused on creating art in different mediums. As a young man, he even legally changed his name in honor of one of his artistic heroes, Hieronymus Bosch, the Dutch painter (c. 1450-1516) often called the first surrealist. While he studied briefly at the Art Academy of Cincinnati and the University of Cincinnati, he is primarily a self-taught artist, “I quickly realized art school was not for me. Surrendering my individuality to learn to think and create like any other human seemed counterintuitive.”

His career path led him to designing cards with Gibson Greetings for a while, and he traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he maintained a studio for a year so he could work in the desert’s pure light and immerse himself in what he described as the first “real art scene” he had experienced. The intense light inspired him to use a wider palette of bright colors in his paintings, as he tried to capture the vibrancy of hues. “I saw what pure light really is. It heightens your senses.”