Bio

Born in Spokane, WA (1986), Tamalin Soleil Baumgarten paints quiet landscape scenes and portraits with a tonal, melancholic realism. She received her MFA from New York Academy of Art in 2015 and her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2010. She has been the recipient of several awards, including two Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant Awards, the Portrait Scholarship Award from the New York Academy of Art, the Dahesh Museum of Art Award, and the Vermont Studio Center grant award. She is also co-founder and director of the Cuttyhunk Island Artists’ Residency, located on Massachusetts’ Cuttyhunk Island, the inspiration for many of her paintings.

Statement

I want to convey a straightforwardness in my work, to present what I felt when I first encountered my subject. The scenes I paint come from recognizing the dignity of small moments. I treat my paintings of seascapes, landscape scenes and buildings as portraits of memory. They often carry a subtle narrative. I build these narratives through use of light and shadow, perspective, and the careful placement of movement or objects in the scene. The narratives in my paintings are open-ended and invite the viewer to bring his or her own interpretation to the painting.

I believe painting is the manifestation of a felt experience—an attempt at representing something that once was. I hope my viewer will find something universal, something that’s there in all of us.