Tom Root was born in Huntsville, Alabama. He studied drawing and painting at Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, Connecticut, under Aaron Shikler N.A. and Deane G. Keller, and at Ringling School of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida.
Early on, Tom was interested in being a part of a contemporary figurative revival. He loved historic portraiture but intensely disliked modern formula-based commercial portraiture and desired to see contemporary portraiture reconnected with fine art. This has been the goal of much of his work.