Tina Ingraham
stills and scapes
June 1 - July 1, 2023
Artist talk, Wednesday, June 14, 6-7pm
A solo exhibition of Tina Ingraham’s atmospheric still lifes and landscapes, expertly rendered with rigorous drawing and tonal color.
“Tina, what determines where you stop in a painting?” I have been asked this question numerous times over the course of my career. I realize my answers have varied over time, and this has led me to reflect upon my understanding of the important question - where do I stop a painting? My answer began to unfold in 1993 when I painted two weeks in residence at Vermont Studio Center. I learned from conversations with instructors in residence, Marjorie Portnow, Barbara Grossman, and Hugh O’Donnel, that painting is a process, and a painting does not come to an end. It does not finish. It evolves and resolves..
During a studio visit in 1996, one of my teachers, Jack Flam, then Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn College, commented on a large portrait I was painting. In it, the model was holding a pair of glasses in her left hand. To me, the hand and the glasses were the only remaining elements I had yet to resolve. “Try to work it so that it’s just a suggestion of what she is holding - like her hand is moving,” Jack said. In continuing the portrait, I considered, at one point, stopping. But I instead continued to work on the hand and glasses, adding a few more gestural brushstrokes. Who knows, I may have gone too far. I may have surpassed the gesture Jack had in mind. But as I look at the painting (Aislynn Weidelle, Woman on a Stool), which still hangs in my studio, I know I would never “touch” that painting again.
Recently, NPR rebroadcast a conversation with Karen Michel and jazz master Ahmad Jamal, in honor of his life and recent death. He had said, “People get after me, Karen, because if I may - because I say we don’t create a fly or a raindrop or a snowflake, but we can reflect creativity. And when we reflect creativity, we discover. And that’s the whole thing about life - discovery. And that’s what I live for, discovery.” I imagined Mr. Jamal stopping mid performance on a certain chord, and most likely that would have been considered a brilliant performance by his audience. He however, would continue on with his improvisation until he had discovered something new, something in the tune, in the sound or feel of the chord’s eventual modulation.“
“Stills and Scapes” reveals yet another answer to the question, “When do I stop?” I don’t stop until I discover a painting’s message. Then I ask of myself, “Might that message be clear to the viewer or is it inferred?” I decide to leave room for a viewer’s musing. Though the still lifes were painted in my studio, they are inspired from my reflections of and time spent in nature. I would be robbed of that discovery had I stopped too early in the process of each painting or, for that matter, with this body of work. -Tina Ingraham
Tina Ingraham was born in Kenton, Ohio in 1947. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College of CUNY in 1996 and Bachelor of Science in Design at the University of Cincinnati, College of DAAP in 1970. She paints in the tradition of The Cape Cod School of Art, established in 1899 by Charles Webster Hawthorne, 1872-1930. Largely influenced by her study with Lennart Anderson, 1928-2015, a second generation student of Hawthorne’s, her work matured with three years of painting in Perugia, Italy from 1999-2003. She traveled Europe studying Old Master works, mosaics, and contemporary painters that enriched her palette and informed her continued research of historical techniques and painting surfaces. She is a recipient of many awards, including fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The Milton and Sally Avery Foundation, grants from The Maine Commission for the Arts and Pollock Krasner Foundations, and residency fellowships from MacDowell Colony, Dorland Mountain Art Colony and The Robert M. MacNamara Foundation. Academic teaching includes The International School of Painting Drawing and Sculpture, Bowdoin College, Hyde School, Brooklyn College and Stephens College. Among the many seated portraits Ingraham has painted are the Myron Edward Ullman III portrait collection of thirteen paintings, and the portrait of Joshua Chamberlain commissioned by Bowdoin College. Down East Book publications include reproductions of Ingraham’s Harbor Fish Market painting “Early Snow” in Carl Little’s and David Little’s Paintings of Portland, and “Portland Pier at Low Tide” in Paintings of Maine, A New Collection by Carl Little.
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