Tina Tammaro
The development of each painting is a bit like writing a vital moment in a scene of a play. Many of my friends are actors and directors. I have taken cues from their work and from my love of film. Often my friends and family offer inspiration. They are part themselves/part actors in a drama that comes from an observed moment preserved in a photo or drawing, but with time, transforms into something larger than that moment. In "I wanted yellow singing and the sun", I capture a connection that is strong but a moment of non-connection as well that cuts deeply. The painting "what is left of myself" also shares in this dual communication.
The lines of poetry used as titles for many of these paintings are all from one book of poems by Charles Bukowski, "The Days Run Away Like Wild Horses Over the Hills". The line is chosen as a title when the work is complete to add an additional layer of meaning, opening the narrative even further. It is not an illustration of the line or poem. I found this book of poems on a Central Park bench decades ago. I spent the entire day there drawing and no one came to claim it. I didn't know the poet at the time but I found something there immediately. Years later, I see his work as an example of bringing narrative back into art after the pure abstraction of Modernism. His poems offered me a clue to open my own life as a source for my work and as a reminder that the male perspective is often different from the female. To never forget that each individual sees the world in their own way. And most importantly, how to move past the personal to a more universal reading of the moment.
