Tammy Salzl

Home: Montreal, Quebec
Title: The Compromise
Media: Oil on canvas / huile sur toile
Dimensions: 152 x 183 cm
Website: www.tammysalzl.com

My work is rooted in figurative oil painting and driven by my interest in probing elements of human experience, in psychological spaces at the borderlands of articulation. I paint to speak what my words cannot.

The stories we tell ourselves about who we are, who we were, and what we’re becoming are implicit in my work. I trudge through terrains of identity, sexuality, power relations, the grotesque and the wondrous. I tightrope the tenuous threads between civilization and nature. Intimate mediums like oil paint and charcoal still the cacophony of a kaleidoscopically shifting world and in collusion with the seductions of beauty I hope to encourage contemplation.

Through art I strive to explore the endless breadth of humanness and yet remain emotionally intimate. With piercing eyes and pulsing flesh my subjects reflect the raw innards of us all. Manifesting as both reality and myth, they are firmly on the side of empathy and righteousness, even in destruction and vengeance. They are lonely, anxious, vulnerable, fierce and powerful, they are the wounded, the victorious the barbaric and the innocent. Capable of both creation and devastation, they inhabit alternate worlds that hint of possible futures.

I work to bring the viewer to a sustained examination of their self and their place in the world. Humanity is less a condition than a choice, and I ask the viewer to imagine what is human, what is real, and what shape the future should take.

2011 Honourable Mention

EDUCATION:
2013 to Present Concordia University, Master of Fine Arts Candidate, Painting and Drawing Concentration Option.
1996 University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta. Bachelor of Fine Arts.

SELECT SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2010 Prospective Portraits. The New Gallery, +15 Window Project. Calgary, AB.
2009 Entitlement. ODD Gallery. Dawson, Yukon.
2009 Inherent Truths. Les Territoires. Montréal, QC.

SELECT GROUP EXHIBITONS:
2011 Drawing 2011, John B. Aird Gallery, Toronto.
2009 The Kingston Prize, Canada’s National Portrait Competition.
2009 The New Hybrids. The Living Arts Centre. Mississauga, Ontario.

SELECT AWARDS:
2010 Dale & Nick Tedeschi Studio Arts Fellowship, Montreal.
2009 Exhibition Creation Residency. Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, Dawson City, Yukon.
2008 Visual Arts project grant. Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

SELECT BIOGRAPHY:
2010 Edmond, Amanda. “The Nature of a Child”, Where Calgary.
2009 Blomgren, Lance. “Tammy Salzl. Entitlement”, Exhibition brochure, ODD Gallery.
2008 Hayes, Scott. “Profiles’ new exhibit promises a long look.” St. Albert Gazette, pg. 48, Wednesday, June 4, 2008. Sasano, Mari. “Moral compass spread across a canvas”. Edmonton Journal