TAMARA BRANTMEIER is a graduate of the University of Minnesota, where she earned her M.F.A. in 2000. She holds a B.F.A. from the University of WI, River Falls, where she graduated in 1992. Currently, she is associate professor of painting and drawing at the University of Wisconsin-Stout.
Brantmeier is most recently the recipient of the first place award at the 2011 Wisconsin Artists Biennial Exhibition, juried by painter Ellen Lanyon. Among other honors and residencies, she was awarded a Jerome Travel Grant to the Florence Academy of Art and the MCAD/Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Artists, both in 2004, as well as a Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship in 2002.
Tamara works with oil and cold wax on canvas, a dramatic departure from her previous use of layered acrylics on birch wood panels. Her current series is an attempt to unearth the experiential universalities of personal identity, parenthood, and sanity. With the birth of her son in 2007, what began as a search for depicting her transition into this new identity has itself transitioned into an unapologetic look at Midwestern sensibilities, weather systems, and growth cycles. Brantmeier purposefully uses color, formal considerations and emotive mark-making to metaphorically communicate a highly personal, transformative experience in a decidedly tacit manner. This can readily be seen in both the physicality of her impasto application, as well as a very conscious, consistent use of the color white. These devices serve a dual purpose, representing an act of concealment and a beautiful paradox: how does one construct a narrative that cannot be understood but through experience? It is with these considerations of formal and technical applications, that the artist strives to create a painted language of familiarity.
Brantmeier is most recently the recipient of the first place award at the 2011 Wisconsin Artists Biennial Exhibition, juried by painter Ellen Lanyon. Among other honors and residencies, she was awarded a Jerome Travel Grant to the Florence Academy of Art and the MCAD/Jerome Fellowship for Emerging Artists, both in 2004, as well as a Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship in 2002.
Tamara works with oil and cold wax on canvas, a dramatic departure from her previous use of layered acrylics on birch wood panels. Her current series is an attempt to unearth the experiential universalities of personal identity, parenthood, and sanity. With the birth of her son in 2007, what began as a search for depicting her transition into this new identity has itself transitioned into an unapologetic look at Midwestern sensibilities, weather systems, and growth cycles. Brantmeier purposefully uses color, formal considerations and emotive mark-making to metaphorically communicate a highly personal, transformative experience in a decidedly tacit manner. This can readily be seen in both the physicality of her impasto application, as well as a very conscious, consistent use of the color white. These devices serve a dual purpose, representing an act of concealment and a beautiful paradox: how does one construct a narrative that cannot be understood but through experience? It is with these considerations of formal and technical applications, that the artist strives to create a painted language of familiarity.
