Tom LaDuke was born in Holyoke, Massachusetts, on April 2, 1963. He received a B.F.A. from the California State University at Fullerton in 1991 and an M.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1994. LaDuke's dioramas of landscapes set upon casts of his own body include EBS (1999), a detailed scale model of an antenna-topped hillside on top of a cast of the curve of his knee. In other sculptures, he utilizes unexpected materials to create realistic facsimiles of objects; Elder (2002), for example, is a tree branch fabricated entirely from pencil lead. His paintings feature surreal landscapes based on the California environment and forms derived from his own body. WNTR PRK (2003) is a miniature rendering, in mixed media, of a stretch of the interstate highway between Orange County and Los Angeles with "mountains" in the background based on a tracing of LaDuke's body on its side.

LaDuke has had three solo exhibitions since 2001, all at the Angles Gallery in Los Angeles. His work has also appeared in group shows, including Bad Sonnets: Grand Metaphors at the Brewery Project in Los Angeles (1999), New In Town at the Portland Art Museum in Portland, Orgeon (2001), and the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach (2002). He lives and works in Los Angeles.