Tamara English with her painting, "Threshhold" Oil on canvas 48" x 48" 2009 © Tamara English (Photo by Claire Sykes)
October 5, 2009
By Claire Sykes
I walk into Tamara English’s Southeast Portland home and feel as if I’m stepping into one of her paintings. Both exude an aura of the exotic.
In Tamara's beautiful house, pillows and painting, “Better For The Mystery” Oil on canvas 36” x 60” 2007 © Tamara English (Photo by Claire Sykes)
Curry-colored pillows flecked with mirrors, deep-red tiles, the soft-green velvet sofa, Middle Eastern fabrics. And spirals that coil through the Oriental carpets and black iron candleholders. Even her two cats, Zuzu the orange one and Mariposa the black, curl together in a circle of fur.
Tamara’s in her work clothes, well-worn and color-smudged, her eyes as blue as her paintings. Graceful, soft-spoken and easy to talk to, she hands me a steaming mug of Dandy Blend, a thick, dark chicory drink. The roasted, nutty aroma wafts up toward my face, the porcelain warms my hands.
We go out the back door to her courtyard, with its Trumpet and Grape Vines, flagstone patio and straw-bale fireplace. Tamara leads me into her studio, a freestanding cement-block addition with French doors, and it’s clear that I’m in the workspace of a dedicated and disciplined, professional artist.
(Photo by Claire Sykes)
(Photo by Claire Sykes)
A 2004 graduate of the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA), in Portland, Tamara has received two major regional awards and grants, and shown in numerous group and solo shows, one of the solos at Portland’s esteemed Mark Woolley Gallery in 2008.
"The One Who Owns Your Breath" Oil on canvas 2009 24" x 24" © Tamara English. Courtesy of Mark Woolley Gallery
Currently, several of her paintings from her most recent body of work are at Anka Gallery here in town. Her work joins that of 12 other PNCA graduates in a group show titled, “All in the Family,” presented by the now-roving Mark Woolley Gallery. The exhibit (October 1-31, 2009) is one of many inside Portland galleries this month, in honor of PNCA’s centennial. Plans are in the works to show her paintings in Chicago.
Opening at Anka Gallery (Photo by Claire Sykes)
At Anka Gallery opening (Photo by Claire Sykes)
Tamara and me (Photo by Anna King)
Claire Sykes: Your paintings have such luscious, sensuous colors, patterns and textures. To me, they’re all about color and layering.
Tamara English: Both coloring and layering are important in my work. In researching for my work, I look at principles of frequency and aspects of quantum mechanics. I have a fascination with color as frequency.
I also have a fascination with layering, because the way most of us experience the world is layered. And the world itself is layered. It’s not just the physical world that we live in. There are all these other layers that we’re experiencing, beyond our bodily senses. Subtle, causal, archetypal. All part of our overall day-to-day experience.
One way to imagine these worlds within worlds is to think of a model of the universe as an ocean. The surface of this ocean, with its waves and splashing, is the physical world. Below the surface is the subtle world of the emotional and, still deeper, is the causal. And then even deeper, you get to this place where there is no direction, no thing, the deepest place, which is Ground of Being.
“Threshhold” Oil on canvas 2009 48” x 48” © Tamara English
CS: All I know is that I want to keep looking at your paintings. The colors alone are so pleasant and inviting.
TE: I’m attracted to complementary pairs—reds and greens, oranges and blues. That’s basic color theory. Building on these pairs, I look to Indian and Persian textiles, illuminated manuscripts, and elements of the natural world for further palette choices.
The pinks and greens allude to flowers and plants; the oranges and blues reference the model of the universe as an ocean. I did fabric painting, batiking and jewelry making in high school, which all taught me a lot about color. Sometimes certain colors keep showing up in the paintings, like magentas or earth tones.
“Midnight, But Your Forehead Shines With Dawn” Oil on canvas 2009 16” x 16” © Tamara English
CS: There’s a faraway feel to your work, too, as if you’ve traveled to the Middle East or Asia.
TE: I went to Turkey in 2008, visiting mosques and Tekkes, the Dervish Lodges. We went to Konya, where the tomb of Jalāl ad-Dīn Rumi is. My time in Turkey really propelled this new body of work, though I’ve had an interest in Persian design elements for a long time. It could be because my grandfather traveled a lot to Iran. Or because I was an avid reader as a kid and had a fascination with the stories from that part of the world. Or because the particular visual vocabulary of Persian decorative motifs is so gorgeous to me.
CS: I can see these influences in your work.
TE: This newest series of paintings uses imagery from the decorative elements in mosques in Turkey and Iran. I use the visual vocabulary of floral elements in the tile work. I don’t get drawn as much to the geometrics; right now it’s about the curves. I also look at the border motifs in 15th century European illuminated manuscripts, especially books of hours.
My fascination with how the unseen world moves in the seen world keeps bringing me to these decorative details. To me, they show that movement so beautifully, because these curves and spirals appear in many different cultures. The paintings become a way to unite the imagery from these different places and see how they interact.
I also like to bring the visual language of science into the mix. It’s a great source material. For instance, the horizontal, vertical and spiral lines on the top layer of the paintings are electron tracings from bubble chambers.
“Curl By Curl, Undo The Dark” Oil on canvas 2009 18” x 18” © Tamara English
CS: They’re very similar to the lined renderings in the tiles in Turkish mosques, aren’t they?
TE: You do start seeing the similarities between these different visual languages pretty quickly. I look for how movement is being expressed. The electron tracings appealed to me in part because of their aesthetic. I also look at science as a belief system and wanted to bring in these visual elements, because for many people science is a path to Truth, a belief system. By combining the imagery of different belief systems in my work, I offer the idea of finding our own experiences of Spirit, and how we find Spirit in our day-to-day lives.
"Betweening" Oil on canvas 2008 20" x 16" © Tamara English
CS: Your earlier work is visually much more directly botanical. What are you saying in these paintings?
TE: This series is about how an idea goes from imagination to actuality. Again, exploring how the unseen becomes seen in the physical world. I looked at the garden in this exploration because a garden begins as dirt and seed and becomes a place that sustains and inspires. The garden stands as both a physically created place and a metaphor for one’s inner world. These paintings invite the contemplation of what each individual can bring forth from within.
"Attained By Bewilderment" Oil on canvas 2009 36" x 50" © Tamara English
CS: What else informs the colors and imagery in your work?
TE: Beyond perpetually gathering visual information, the poetry of Rumi (Coleman Barks’s translations) and Hafiz. Rumi’s at the top. A lot of my paintings I’ve worked on while listening to recordings of Coleman Barks.
CS: What music do you listen to while you paint? There are lots of CDs in your studio.
TE: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, Bob Marley, Johnny Cash, Turkish flute.
Tamara scraping her palette clean (Photo by Claire Sykes)
(Photo by Claire Sykes)
(Photo by Claire Sykes)
CS: What does the process of painting give you?
TE: When the process is in full swing, there’s this flow. There’s nothing else there. It’s just me and the canvas in a dialogue, listening to the painting and responding to that listening. As I’ve looked at my path as an artist, I’ve realized it’s a path that allows me to engage with many wisdom traditions, to bring elements of these different traditions into my work. To understand my experience of Spirit and how I encounter Spirit in my day-to-day experience. The practical aspect of the realm of the mystic. Art is the thing I am here to do. The more that I engage with my art and through my art, the more I can enrich my own life, and hopefully also enrich the world around me.
© Claire Sykes. All rights reserved.
