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Thomas Sherlock Hodgson was born on June 5, 1924, in Toronto, Ontario. He grew up on Toronto's Centre Island and began painting as a child. At age ten, he took a ferry to the city every Saturday morning for art classes at the Art Gallery of Toronto (now the Art Gallery of Ontario) under Arthur Lismer from 1934 to 1936. He attended Central Technical School in Toronto from 1939 to 1943, studying under Charles Goldhamer and Bob Ross. In 1943, at age nineteen, Hodgson joined the Royal Canadian Air Force to train as a pilot and served overseas during World War II. After his discharge in 1945, he enrolled at the Ontario College of Art, where he studied under Rowley Walter Murphy and graduated in 1946.

Following graduation, Hodgson began working in advertising from 1946 to 1967, establishing a successful commercial career as a freelance illustrator, layout artist, and art director. Simultaneously, he experimented as an artist, making watercolours and joining art societies including the Ontario Society of Artists in 1954, the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour in 1954, the Canadian Group of Painters in 1956, and becoming an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1962. By the early 1950s, he was experimenting with abstraction.

In 1953, Hodgson was one of seven artists who participated in the exhibition "Abstracts at Home" at Simpson's department store in downtown Toronto, organized by William Ronald. This led to his involvement with Painters Eleven, a group of Ontario-based abstract artists that included Jack Bush, Oscar Cahen, Alexandra Luke, J.W.G. MacDonald, Ray Mead, Kazuo Nakamura, William Ronald, Harold Town, Walter Yarwood, and Hortense Gordon. Hodgson was particularly influenced by Oscar Cahen, a fellow commercial artist, especially Cahen's color juxtapositions. He also had a solo exhibition at the Douglas Duncan Picture Loan Society and Hart House Gallery at the University of Toronto in 1953, and solo exhibitions at the Gallery of Contemporary Art in 1954, 1956, and 1957.

In 1955, Hodgson's work was selected for the Pittsburgh International Exhibition at the Carnegie Museum of Art, where he was inspired by the large-scale canvases used by other abstract painters, leading him to create his own large-scale spontaneous gestural works. His work was characterized by bold colors and strokes of paint in large formats, with critics describing him as the consummate gestural painter of Painters Eleven—gutsy and aggressive but ultimately lyrical. He thought of abstraction as abstracting a feeling or memory rather than a record of nature.

Hodgson was also an accomplished athlete. He learned to paddle as a child on Centre Island and became a champion canoeist, earning his first Canadian title in 1941. He represented Canada in sprint canoeing at the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, where he placed eighth in the C-2 1000m event, and again at the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne.

From 1965 to approximately 1972, Hodgson explored a Pop Art style of portraiture, creating more figurative work as a departure from his abstract expressionism. From 1968 to 1973, he taught at the Ontario College of Art, and afterwards taught at Art Space in Toronto. He began painting full time in 1976. In the late 1970s, Hodgson stepped back from the art world, losing contact with dealers and curators. He returned to exhibiting in 1983 and 1985 with solo exhibitions at Bau-Xi Gallery, painting again in the abstract expressionist style. In the 1990s, Christopher Cutt's Gallery held several solo exhibitions of his work until 1995.

Hodgson's work was included in over 50 major solo and group exhibitions and is represented in collections including the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the University of British Columbia. Friends and family recognized a deterioration in his health in 1995. Hodgson died in Peterborough, Ontario on February 27, 2006, from complications arising from Alzheimer's disease. He is recognized as one of the early pioneers of abstract expressionist painting in Ontario and an important member of Painters Eleven.