Tamara Bond: Plants and Animals

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November 22 - December 6
Opening Reception: November 22, 1-3 PM

In this new series, Tamara Bond uses plants and animals as symbols as a way to explore our interconnectedness. Lines, colours, and symbols overlap and create new windows and narratives into her work. Inspired by the drawings and writings in children' s books, Bond uses these strong visual references and bold colours to examine transformation, the joy of painting, and our connection to nature.

Featured
I am the Dog, You are the Dog 16 × 16 Mixed Media on Board $ 1750

I am the Dog, You are the Dog
16 × 16
Mixed Media on Board
$ 1750

I am the Crow, You are the Crow 16 × 16 Mixed Media on Board $ 1750

I am the Crow, You are the Crow
16 × 16
Mixed Media on Board
$ 1750

I am the Rabbit, You are the Rabbit 16 × 16 Mixed Media on Board $ 1750

I am the Rabbit, You are the Rabbit
16 × 16
Mixed Media on Board
$ 1750

Artist Statement:

While making these paintings, I was also taking an online Master class course on writing a children’s book with children’s book author, Julia Donaldson. I was thinking about children’s book drawings and reading and looking at kid’s books. Doing that work really inspired me to try and make a body of work that would speak to young people. When titling the paintings I wanted to talk about our connection with nature, that we are nature. I also wanted the titles to be repetitive, like the writing so often is in children’s books.

I use plants and animals in my work a lot. In this series, I use plants and animals as symbols and metaphors to talk about our interconnectedness. This happens in my paintings as lines, colours, and symbols overlap and create new windows and new pictures in my work. Another theme I was working with in this series is transformation. Transformation is a way to renew ourselves, again and again. The work itself transformed over and over again as I added layer after layer of colours, lines, and shapes. I wanted to show all these layers in the work and show the process.

While I created this body of work I listened to a podcast of two curators interviewing one of my current favourite artists. They talked about the act of painting, and how when a painter paints, they are painting with all of the painters who have painted before them. That really stuck with me. I am taken with the process of painting, the joy of picture making, the sheer thrill of putting many colours on the canvas. Mostly I made these paintings because it’s really fun to paint. Painting brings me back to my own childhood, because some of my happiest memories of childhood are when I began painting when I was five.