Tamar Kander is a painter who has a studio just outside Bloomington, Indiana, where she lives with her husband and several animals.
She has won many awards both locally and nationally. Her mixed media paintings are represented in museum and corporate collections both in North and South America, as well as Europe and South Africa. Additionally, her work is included in numerous private collections nationally and internationally.
Galleries representing Tamar’s work are located in Santa Fe, Santa Barbara, Chicago, Atlanta, Indianapolis and Bloomington.
She has a BAFA (with honors) from the University of the Witwatersrand, in Johannesburg, S.A., where she was awarded a travel scholarship to Italy for six months. She has an MFA with a double major in Painting, and Art Therapy, from Goldsmith’s college, University of London, U.K.
She has studied etching and monoprinting at the Art Student’s League of New York, where she was awarded a scholarship, and taught watercolour painting at workshops around the country.
To experience non-representational visual art is passing through a magical portal into an enchanted landscape.
Entering the enchanted land of Tamar Kander’s art offers the viewer stepping-block paths through a rich interior landscape of life’s possibilities and the sense of satisfaction at the end of those steps — while we are sitting or standing right where we are.
Read MorePlease see Shows for a list of where I will be exhibiting in the near future.
In theIr latest bodies of work, on view this month in a two-person show at Ventana Fine Art, artists John Axton and Tamar Kander continue to plumb the depths of memory, imagination, and the subconscious. Some 15 new paintings by each artist are unveiled during an opening reception at the gallery on Fri- day, July 6, at 5 p.m. Aptly titled Other Worlds, the show is a complementary pairing of two artists whose robust careers span more than four decades.
Read MoreImages seep into her subconscious and emerge transformed by her feelings about them in her nonobjective paintings. “Water has been creeping into my work lately,” explains Kander, who lives next to a country lake in Indiana. “I often spend time standing on my balcony looking at the water.” - See more at: http://www.southwestart.com/events/ventana-jul2015#sthash.ekfhx9xE.dpuf
Read MoreArtists Tamar Kander and Jamas Brooke live and work in a log cabin in Brown County. In many ways, the couple’s location in this rural spot near the storied artists colony is serendipitous. Having lived all over the world, abstract painter Kander does anything but render the landscape that literally surrounds her studio in the woods. And though Brooke makes traditional pottery, the traditions from which he draws aren’t local, but rather Japanese and Native American.
Read MoreFor Tamar Kander to create her abstract paintings, two conditions must first be met. One she satisfied decades ago by attending art school in her native South Africa and in England: “The ability to draw is necessary for an abstract artist,” she says. This grounding allows her to “unconsciously create space,” developing a balanced composition that recalls images she has encountered— from the ridge above her Brown County home to a weathered wall on a house in Martinsville.
The second requirement, however, must be fulfilled anew each time Kander enters her studio.
Read MoreBloomington area abstract painter Tamar Kander has made us proud. One of her works was recently purchased by New York University for the conference room of University President John Sexton.
Read More“My work is constantly evolving, not in a linear way, but more like a spiral at the foundation of which is my individual thumbprint,” Kander says. “I am still intrigued with translating my experiences into evocative universal forms or symbols by using color, tone, texture and markings, but recent influences include taking up dance again and endeavoring to interpret the feelings and mood of movement into my work. We also relocated to a home on a lake. Water is now a part of my daily experience, creeping into my work, helping the flow and clarifying my vision.”
Read MoreFurther into the realm of abstraction, Tamar Kander’s small collages are variations on a theme she has been pursuing since I’ve come to know her work: just-right compositions of subtle and bold contrast, now with torn pieces of newspaper — in this case with Chinese characters — or bits of string or mesh brought into the mix. “Late Afternoon Journey” incorporates orange, fuchsia, red and yellow, paying homage to the sun in all its alchemical glory.
Read MoreTamar Kander is an abstract painter who uses the most rugged materials to create the most delicate, poetic effects. To her oil and acrylic pigments, she adds construction materials such as cement and joint compound to build rich, dense surfaces.
Read MoreLike ancient walls that bear witness to natural and manmade passages, the surfaces of Tamar Kander's canvases are testaments to both the subjective and objective. Working with a variety of materials, including powdered gesso, cold wax, dry-wall compound, acrylic medium, and marble dust, she builds her surfaces so they "breathe and have elasticity," she says. "Then I begin the process of realizing my idea - my subjective response- by collaging my photos or etchings, troweling on colors, then sanding them down and drawing with oil sticks or graphite. Sometimes bits of the sandpaper are embedded on the canvas-used sandpaper is very beautiful to me."
Read MoreThe mixed media paintings of Kander are suggestive of changing skies, whether or not this is what she intends. And Kander moves layers of paint around on the canvas in satisfyingly complex combinations, using like colors. Her skies emerge in yellow, gold, peach and amber with an occasional bit of red, gray or white sounding through the fog of thickly applied paint.
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