Gallery @ SPL presents a reception for Destiny Eludes, a series of paintings by our next local artist, Gilmore Tamny! Her work will be up through the month of July, and her paintings "create a visual language to help [her] sort out the essential mystery of life."
Artist Statement: I paint representational images, often of woodland animals, in gouache or acrylics on canvas or paper. I also depict cats, dogs, landscapes, seascapes, and human figures and faces. I paint at home at my desk. I’m self-taught. I rarely have an idea ahead of time of what I’m going to do when I sit down to work. I dislike wasting paint and will often paint a canvas with whatever is left over from a previous work as a base layer. Having to work over or even fight colors to depict the new images I’m attempting to convey, does suggest images in themselves, or give a painting a conflicted feeling or mood. Sometimes it nets little and just makes a lot more work for myself. It’s hard to predict, which I like. The decisions an artist makes about when a viewer will be able to recognize the objects or actions in a painting are interesting—from across the room? five feet away? two feet away? I’m finding a fair amount depends on that answer. My hope is to explore the essential mystery and magic that is life with humility and not too much fussiness. For eight years I had a daily practice of drawing non-representationally. To discover my own visual language in the painting of animals and landscapes after this has been a delight, even as difficult as it can be in execution. My wish would be for a viewer to find meaning, recognition, or pleasure in this visual language, but, if not, to be inspired to locate and/or create their own.
Artist Bio: Gilmore Tamny is an artist, writer, and musician. Her artwork has appeared in literary magazines and gallery shows, and in 2023 she received an Somerville Arts Council grant in Visual Arts. Her book of poems, HAIKU4U, came out in 2019. She’s played in numerous bands, including The Yips, Mike Rep and the Quotas, Chanel No. 5, Weather Weapon, as well as being mysteriously involved in The Mystery. She received a Postgraduate Certificate in Art Crime and Cultural Heritage Protection from the Association for Research into Crimes Against Art in 2019. She lives in Somerville with a little cat named Faraday and is most likely listening to an audiobook, painting, snacking, playing guitar, railing at the universe, plotting a trip, or some combination therein. Her artwork can be found on her website.
