Self-Portrait, oil, 12 x 12 in.
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Tina Tammaro's 7 Things
1 Studio Time. Recently I saw the Sean Penn movie, Into the Wild. It is the memoir of a young man named Christopher McCandless, who decides to embark on what he calls "an aesthetic voyage," putting his own intellectual and spiritual growth above a life of security and "things." In the movie, he says he read somewhere, "How important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong. To measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions. That's the way it is here." For him, "here" was being alone struggling to survive in the wilds of Alaska. For me it is being alone in my studio in front of a large canvas.
Today there are no rules for artists or in life, really, no common mythologies that we all share in the same ways. How do I communicate with the viewer when everything is possible? There are so many ways to communicate and busy ourselves away from our own thoughts. Quiet thought and long conversations are uncommon for many. For me, having an abundant amount of time for deep friendships and contemplative solitude are vital to my work.
To have this time in my life, I have chosen to live a life without extreme comfort and security. I am far from uncomfortable, but I have to be creative to make it through each month and have become quite skillful with a pot of beans. I am not committed to "a lifetime of poverty" and look forward to someday selling enough of my "personal work" to live with some financial security. Until this is reality, I value my time and do not wish to work long hours outside my studio. I have the time to really know people and value the rich conversations I have with my friends and students. Everything seems significant to me, and I owe this in part to a constant vigilance to basic survival.
2 Museums. I am most at home in museums. I love the quiet and the hushed, searching conversations. Paintings are a world to enter and explore. Since they do not move or change (the entire work is seen all at one time), you are not being manipulated from your thoughts. Instead, it is you and your thoughts that move and ponder.
3 Music. Listening to different types of music helps me find different "voices" so each painting has its own presence. As I develop a painting, a certain CD or set of CDs becomes its "soundtrack." I do not do this on purpose, just like I never plan the whole painting before I begin to paint it. I start a painting when I find a pose of one person, and that person’s mood and gesture begin to resonate and I can see where the figure should be on the canvas. I then begin to consider who else might be there, whether it is night or day, whether the figures should be outside or inside, what is in the space with them, what lighting, colors, and so on I should use. Once I block in a figure or two, I usually have to sit with the painting for some time before I know what to do next. It is hard to get back to that place until I remember that a certain band or record has the tone that will help me reenter the narrative and enrich its meaning.
4 Movies. I spend so much time thinking and discussing with my friends all that I am thinking about that I find great joy in the movies. For two hours I can turn off my own thoughts and be in someone else’s. It is certainly the richest medium of our time, and can have a huge impact on how the public interprets political and social trends. In the contemporary world, directors of movies and stage theatrer are my greatest teachers about narrative and viewpoint, since in the last 100 years neither has been a major goal in painting. When I was 19, I spent a summer going to movies with Michael Podolski. This is when I began to fall in love with the cinema. It was the summer of the first Star Wars movie, and there was a Beatles marathon. And even though I haven't seen him in 30 years, when we recently reconnected, we found we both have the same favorite movie, Wings of Desire. Michael is a filmmaker and said something very true: "When it is a great movie, it will haunt you."
5 Criticism. My favorite thing to read is criticism, not just of painting but of all forms of art, culture, and politics. When I studied art history in graduate school, I soon realized I had the mind of an artist and not a historian. Everything I read and studied was about developing my own ideas. While reading I often find one idea that fascinates me, and I soon disregard the main point the writer was trying to make and find myself writing frantically in my sketchbook about how it relates to my own work or thoughts. When I was young I found this a bit distressing until I read Harold Bloom's book about poets called The Anxiety of Influence. Here he states, "weaker poets idealize" but "strong poets make history by misreading one another, so as to clear imaginative space for themselves.... poetic influence need not make poets less original; as often it makes them more original."
6 Delacroix's Journal. I could name so many artists who I have dialogues with each day in my studio but I will limit it to the first one who began the journey. I first read Delacroix's journals when I was 21. Unlike the present art world, which fears any lineage to the past and denies authentic experience in this post-modern world, Delacroix described a life full of conversations, great love affairs, and a passionate exchange with culture. He was not trying to be hip or acceptable but to follow what really moved him and to express that in a way that would be open to many, to go beyond making art only about art where the standard is only the small artificial world of the "informed" avant-garde. He showed me that there is no way to be totally original but that it is important to be authentic, that love of your medium and a real life lived will give you a voice and an audience, and most importantly, that the great art of the past is there for study and guidance.
7 Teachers. We are always surrounded by experiences that can change us and open us to new ideas. People throughout my life have offered paths to "those ancient places"—they nudge you to enter a new depth of living. I thank each one for pushing me along: My fifth grade teacher, Mr. Redman, turned the classroom's entire coatroom into an art space. Each month one student had the room entirely to themselves for a day for self-expression. What a precedent to set up for a 10-year-old! During college my drawing and painting professor, Alex McKibbin, showed me what an artistic life can be—ideas, music, paint, and passion. By valuing my opinion he gave this working-class girl an opening to an intellectual life. In New York City in the 80s, I met the wisest woman I have ever known, Lynne Shapiro. She encouraged me to walk through an art exhibit and just enjoy it, then go do some research and then return and bring the two experiences together into my own formed knowledge, backed and enriched by the experts. From this I began to develop my voice. To you, Lynne, who truly is a poet! My Grandpa treated me like a boy and took me on journeys in his underground world of fascinating faces and showed me how to never be afraid. Then there was Gary, the man who took me to the most ancient of places and gave me his son, Neko, the most beautiful gift of my life. They both forced me beyond a life of books and study and ideas, and like Dante, took me on a journey into and out of hell. I finally now "feel strong." But most of all, I’m grateful to my parents, who never tried to tell me I was making wrong choices, and especially my mom who read me her favorite poem by Robert Frost: "I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."
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