More From The Birmingham News   |   Subscribe To The Birmingham News Tom Findlay had an unwilling brush with notoriety in the Susan Smith case. Now, he paints children ... In the Arms of Angels Sunday, April 17, 2005 KATHY KEMP News staff writer Publishers dangled book deals. Tabloids offered cash. Hollywood called, promising that if he cooperated, he could write his own paycheck. Tom Findlay said no to them all. To this day, he will not speak the name of Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her two sons 11 years ago in a case that made international headlines. Smith's motive, prosecutors said, was her desire to win back the affections of Findlay. The two had dated on and off until Findlay wrote her a letter that became central to the case. In the letter, he told Smith he didn't want children. "It was a tragic, crazy thing," Findlay now says, sipping coffee in a back room at Chez Lu Lu cafe in English Village. "I had a relationship with that woman, and for that I take full responsibility. Did I know what she was going to do? No. But if I hadn't put myself in that spot, maybe it wouldn't have happened." Findlay's burden of "what ifs" might seem apparent in his artwork, which has become a top seller at Art Alley in Homewood. He paints angels - most poignantly, angels with their arms wrapped around children who appear near the ages of Smith's sons, 3-year-old Michael and baby Alex, who was just 14 months. Findlay is taken aback by the notion. "What I'm doing now has nothing to do with all that," he says. "The children I paint are alive and safe and protected." He says the maternal angel of his paintings is his girlfriend, Gyl Turner, a mother of two teenagers. The two began dating a year and a half ago. Until then, Findlay's serious relationships had been with women who had no children. He wasn't prepared for what he found with Turner. "When we started dating, and I saw the love she had for her kids, it all sort of connected for me - the love my mother had for us, and the sacrifices she made. I saw this again with Gyl, but from a different perspective - as an adult. I could appreciate it more. There is a bond between a mother and her children that is just incredible." Findlay, 37, looks nothing like the balding young man in a business suit who testified at Smith's trial. He has shaved his head and grown a goatee, and his clothing is dark and nondescript. He looks exactly like the artist he has become. He works in a second-floor studio in his childhood home in Mountain Brook. He uses a palette knife to lay acrylic paint on canvas. The images are fluid and textured. He finishes each piece with a tinted oil stain that gives it an Old World feel. His angels, usually done in earth tones with dramatic shadows and light, have an ethereal, almost mystical quality. You never quite see their faces. "We've sold every single one we've had - about 15 in four months," says Art Alley owner Jim Smith, who is hosting Findlay's first show May 6 from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Homewood gallery. "People walk in here and they're just drawn to his work." Support system: One of those was interior designer Kathy Harris, who selected Findlay's "Angel of Glory" to hang in the 2005 Decorators' ShowHouse. "I fell in love with it," Harris says. "It sets a special mood in a room. It makes you feel calm, protected." (The showhouse, 3025 Cherokee Road in Mountain Brook, runs April 22 through May 8.) Findlay's friends, many of whom he's known since childhood, have been a strong support system for both the man and his art. Laura Hydinger, a friend since their days at Mountain Brook Junior High, recalls Findlay doodling on the edges of his notebooks during class. "He'd do these incredibly detailed drawings, and you'd say, `Tom, that's great,' and he'd just shrug it off." Hydinger was at Findlay's house one day last summer, hoping to buy one of his cowboy paintings for her husband, when she spied what proved to be Findlay's first angel painting. She found it "breathtaking" and brought it home to hang in a hallway, where it is visible from every room in her house. Not long after, when Hydinger's 42-year-old husband, Thornton Hydinger, suffered a stroke, that angel became a source of strength and comfort. "There is something about it that just draws you in and gives you peace," says Hydinger, whose husband is doing well in recovery. "For a painting to have that kind of impact, you know the artist is really connected to the subject." Born in Miami, where his father, Cary Findlay, was an accountant with a large firm, Findlay moved to Mountain Brook at age 8, just after his parents' divorce. His mother, Joyce Findlay, didn't think Miami was safe for kids. A cousin who lived in Birmingham encouraged her to relocate. With Tom's older brother, Jon, in military school, he was left to be a father figure for his younger brother, Scott. "I had a lot of responsibility helping my mom. It was difficult in some aspects, because I was trying to be a kid myself. It made me grow up pretty fast." Findlay was a starting running back at Mountain Brook High in the mid-1980s. He also ran track and played baseball. As a ninth-grader, he won a statewide high school art competition sponsored by the Alabama Zoological Society. Without telling Tom, his teacher had entered his watercolor painting of elephants. "I thought, `Man, this is pretty neat,'" Findlay says. At Auburn University, he earned a degree in graphic art with a minor in business. After college, he went to work as a graphic artist for his father, who had bought Conso Products, a manufacturer of decorative trim pieces for the home. Painted as playboy: The company is based in Union, S.C. One of the secretaries was Susan Smith, who was separated from her husband and raising their two boys. Findlay, then 26, was considered among Union's most eligible bachelors, the news media later informed a riveted nation. For a young man who had never had problems at home or at school, least of all with the law, what happened Oct. 25, 1994, was unimaginable. Smith claimed, at first, that a carjacker had kidnapped her children, but eventually confessed to rolling them, still strapped in the car seats of her burgundy Mazda Protege, into Long Lake in Union County. At the trial, prosecutors read the letter Findlay had sent Smith a week before she killed her children. In it, he stated that while he liked Smith, he wasn't suited to raising children. Although law enforcement officials made it clear from the start that Findlay had nothing to do with the tragedy, the news media, especially the tabloids, painted him as a playboy who spent his nights lolling in hot tubs. "The press made me sound like Tom Hanks in `Bachelor Party,'" he says. "I've never been a party guy. I was normal, no worse or wilder than anybody else." Findlay proved to be the rare figure in the Smith case to remain silent. Just in time for the trial, in 1995, Smith's ex-husband, David Smith, released his book, "Beyond Reason: My Life with Susan Smith." Five years later, her mother, Linda Russell, published "My Daughter Susan Smith." They and various other family members appeared on TV to talk about the case. Smith was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. A couple of years ago, she made headlines again when she placed a $40-a-year ad on WriteAPrisoner.com seeking pen pals. She described herself as a woman who loves rainbows and Mickey Mouse. By 1996, Findlay had moved back to Birmingham to be with his mother, Joyce, who was dying of colon cancer. The paparazzi staked out the funeral home, snapping Findlay's picture as he left the viewing. "You know, I've never talked about all that, and I never will," Findlay says. "I'm not one of those guys like Joey Buttafuoco." Findlay looked after his brother Scott and started several businesses, including a pet store that expanded to include a magazine and radio show. He sold those and ran an Internet company that served as a market for small retailers. Then he got briefly into the jewelry business. A year or so ago, Findlay, who hadn't attended church regularly since his youth at Mountain Brook Baptist, started accompanying his girlfriend to services at Church of the Highlands. He was also starting his art career - painting cowboys and jazz musicians and landscapes and selling them by word of mouth. Reconnecting to faith: His reconnection to his Christian faith, and the mothering of Gyl Turner, inspired him to focus on angels. Sales of his work began to soar. Right now, his pieces range in price from $600 to several thousand dollars. (See more of his artwork at www.thomasandrewart.com.) From the start, Findlay signed his pieces "Thomas Andrew," using only his first and middle names. He's wrestled with his desire to stay private while also wanting to take his work to a larger audience. He discussed his misgivings with his father, who is now retired and living in Florida. "I said, `Dad, I love doing the art, and things are starting to take off for me, but the only way I'm going to grow is, I've got to get my name out there, and I'm just so hesitant.' His reaction was, `Son, you can't change history. So hold your head up, tell people what you're doing, and let your art speak for itself. People will like it, and you, or they won't.'" Findlay lives alone now in his family home. Both his brothers are in other states. Jon, 39, is a lawyer, and Scott, 32, works for a physical therapy company. His father has asked him more than once why he stays in Birmingham. "The answer is, this is home. All my friends are here, people who knew me before all that happened. They know me better than anybody." He spends his time with those friends, and with Turner. He doesn't rule out the possibility of marriage and fatherhood. "My mother always told me I'd make a good dad," he says. Findlay's best friend, commercial real estate broker John Boone, describes him as "a thoughtful, sensitive guy. He's always been that way. Tom doesn't have a dark side. When we get together, we laugh." Hydinger agrees, but sees Findlay as more guarded with strangers. "Anybody who'd gone through what he did would be that way," she says. Nevertheless, Findlay continues to pursue his art and his effort to take it to the masses. "The difference between me and other artists is, I've got a business mind, too. I'm not one of these people who does art for the sake of being creative. To make it in art, you've got to be a marketing person, or you'll be a starving artist, and there's plenty of them out there." Findlay is exploring the idea of licensing his images for prints, cards and other products. He's also seeking sponsors to purchase pieces to donate to nonprofit organizations that work with children. His first such piece, "In the Arms of Love," sponsored by Birmingham physician Dr. Kim Parker, will hang in the Bell Center, which works with special needs children and their families. The agency is free to reproduce the artwork in its promotional material and on any item it might sell at a fund-raiser. "One of the main things I want to do with my art is help kids," Findlay says. "The last thing I want is for someone to think I'm trying to profit (from the Smith case). "Even if that hadn't happened, I'd still be painting angels. This is what I am called to do." E-mail: kkemp@bhamnews.com.