Tammy Salzl

Home: Montréal, Québec
Title: Fights Like a Girl
Media: Watercolour on paper / aquarelle sur papier
Dimensions: 61 x 51 cm
Website: www.tammysalzl.com

“The simplest human gestures tell stories” – Lucien Freud

Portraiture tells the story of us.  It takes us on a journey to the borderlands where individual and collective identities meet; where human beings connect.

I see my portrait work as stories that give voice to the unspoken communications and emotions we experience when we interact with one another.  Having chosen subjects from my circle of friends and family, I strive to reflect the spaces I see them occupy and the parts of them that exist within all of us – they are lonely, anxious, vulnerable, fierce, and powerful; they are the wounded, the victorious, the barbaric and the innocent.

The skin I paint is a fleshy, teeming and slightly toxic surface pulled taught between the hidden and the revealed.  I want this surface to make a connection between the material of paint and the material of the body, to reflect not only a psychological make-up but also suggest the “object-ness” of the body; a medium susceptible to the forces of gravity and stresses of life, an embodiment of the human condition itself.

What truths about us are revealed through our flesh?  What histories can be read within the depths of our eyes and the lines on our skin?  What stories exist in the simplest of human gestures?

EDUCATION:
2014 projected Concordia University, Montréal.  Master of Fine Arts, Painting
1997 University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta.  Bachelor of Fine Arts.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
March 2013 Falling Through the Mirror. Two Person Exhibition with Emily Jan FOFA Gallery, Main Space, Montreal.
June 2010 Prospective Portraits. The New Gallery, +15 Window Project. Calgary, AB.
Oct. 2009 Entitlement. ODD Gallery. Dawson City, Yukon.

GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2014 Falling Through the Mirror. Two Person Exhibition with Emily Jan, Latitude 53 Gallery, Edmonton, AB.
April/May 2013 Into the Woods. AKA Gallery, Saskatoon SK.
2013 Tell-Tales, (solo). Union Gallery, Kingston, ON.
Nov. 2012  Just Draw, dc3 Art Projects, Edmonton, AB.
Feb. 2011 Drawing 2011, John B. Aird Gallery, Toronto, ON.
May 2009 The New Hybrids. The Living Arts Centre. Mississauga, Ontario

AWARDS:
2013 Travel Grant. Conseil des arts et des lettres Quebec.
2010/11 Dale & Nick Tedeschi Studio Arts Fellowship, Montreal, QC.
2008 Exhibition Creation Residency, 2009. Klondike Institute of Art and Culture, Dawson City, Yukon.