Portfolios | joannetarlin

2024

Growing

The plants along the eroding shores near my home are tenacious. This series explores power and vulnerability as expressed by the relationships of images of plants and flowers to each other in unknown environments.

2023-Present

Maine

I arrived in Maine from Massachusetts right before the onset of the Covid epidemic. As I've walked the land and watched the wind churn the ocean and birds sore on its currents, this sublime place has entered into my imagery.

2022-Present

The Way Through Nature

The philosophy of finding one's way by spending time in nature has been spoken of and written about for thousands of years. These works present imaginary landscapes where plants stand-in for people and the compositions reveal my reactions to ills in society.

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2020-Present

Tide Poems

These abstractions of tide plains and seabirds began shortly after I arrived in Maine. As I've seen the decline in the numbers of birds, my attention is drawn to them even more.

2020-Present

Sea Change

With all the hardship and strife in the world, I can't help but imagine brighter better places. These imaginary worlds aside worlds, address the need to break free from the divisiveness and anger, to shift paradigms.

2016-2019

Narrative Nature

These works are symbolic representations of memories and contemplations about life. Inspired by my late father's writings and the Romantic painters, I developed this series to present my thoughts.

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2011-Present

Natural Disorder

The world just seems out-of-order. It's the twenty-first century and people are still killing each other over territories, differences, and fear of "the other." These paintings use the land and sea to illustrate the insanity of it all.

2015-Present

Thoughts about other worlds, spiritual places, and dreams of gateways to Utopia were the genesis for these paintings. Some were created after Hurricane Maria and its destruction of the island of Vieques, Puerto Rico. It's a lush special place where horses roam free and graze with birds on their backs in lands still scarred with toxic waste from when the USA had a military installation located there.

2013-2016

The Dark Side

Using a painting technique that builds layer upon layer of small specks of paint, images of imaginary dark places emerge. Each dark world was created in reaction to some news of a person or persons being abused. The density of the marks is representative of the complexity of the problems.

2008-2013

Geometric Abstraction

While working in a studio in the SOWA district of Boston, I would often view the city and its varied architecture from the windows or take a walk through the neighborhoods and soak in the light and watch the way it glinted off the glass. These works integrate thoughts of spiritual transcendence from a harsh, angular world where many are closed in and forced to conform.

Joanne Tarlin