A different kind of artist

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By Krystle S. Morey

Tom Veilleux is a different kind of artist.

Tom Veilleux

He draws with his feet and his canvas, in a way, tells him what to create.

The Webster, Massachusetts native plots the routes of his runs on a map to draw cartoon characters, animals, self-portraits and more. He uses the MapMyRun App to track his paths.

“When I see a map, I look at it differently than most people,” Veilleux said.

He visits Granville as part of his job as an engineer for Saint-Gobain. Granville is an ideal canvas for drawing with your feet because of its variety of streets and trails – and he has the opportunity to run in both New York and Vermont on the same outing, he said.

“Rectangular streets are good for some things, but a city with a river that runs through it, with twisted hills … you are going to get curves, which are hard to come by, and curves are what make drawings interesting,” Veilleux said.

Veilleux particularly likes to run on the D & H Rail Trail and in hidden alleyways he can find in the village. There are also parks where he can free-hand details on his drawings without having to follow village streets to a tee.

“Runners don’t usually take dead end streets,” he said. “I run down a lot of dead end streets.”

In Granville, he has drawn a lizard, whale, goat and more. He is working on plotting out a route that looks like the Granville High School mascot, the Golden Horde.

 

This is only a preview of the story published in the Granville Sentinel. To read the full story, pick up a print copy of this week’s paper at the newsstand or read it online here.