Tom Bachtell is a self-taught artist who is an illustrator and caricaturist for The New Yorker's Talk of the Town as well as other sections, contributing regularly for 23 years.
[3] He was a finalist for the 18th Lambda Literary Awards as illustrator along with editor Robert Trachtenberg for the book When I Knew under the Belles Lettres category.
[4] Tom Bachtell was interested in drawing as a child and was especially fixated on the older works from New Yorker cartoonists from the 1930s and 1940s such as Peter Arno, Charles Addams, James Thurber, Syd Hoff and Al Hirschfeld.
[3] When he was 10, he drew his impression of the guests at his parents' cocktail party at their Ohio home on a portable chalkboard.
)[9] Bachtell continued to draw for "Goings on About Town" and other sections through early 1995; his subjects during that time included Kris Kristofferson, Madonna, and a young Allison Janney (at the time performing in a short-lived off-Broadway play Five Women Wearing the Same Dress).
[citation needed] Bachtell drew for "Talk of the Town" for 23 years; his final illustrations for the section ran in the 9/16 July 2018 issue.
In 2005, Bachtell was a finalist for the 18th Annual Lambda Literary Awards as illustrator along with editor Robert Trachtenberg for the book "When I Knew" under the Belles Lettres category.
[13] In 2018, Bachtell drew Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for the CD cover of Notorious RBG in Song, performed by vocalist Patrice Michaels and pianist Kuang-Hao Huang.
He thought the art classes were strict, pompous, would make him obsessed with technique and weren't fun.
[16] [17] Tom is currently an active chamber pianist and teaches and performs swing dancing, mainly the Lindy and Balboa.