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Artist Statement:
The current body of work
retells the stories of women,
mythical and biblical, real
and imagined. These archetypal
images enquire into the
essence of human experience
revealed in feminine form.
The watercolor paintings had
their origin in the personal
experience of realizing the
ways that life transforms us.
The artist’s own realization
of how she had been marked by
events and emotions became
clear in her identification
with the fragile and fearless
figures that emerged from her
imagination. Through the
creative process, pain had
been transformed into beauty.
What began as an inward,
healing process moved outward
to reclaim the history of
images of the feminine,
ranging from the prehistoric
Venus of Willendorf to
present-day women who embody
the energy of their female
antecedents. They all have
chosen a path of exposure of
both their outward identities
and their inner selves. For
these women, the depth of
their experiences has reached
the surface, symbolically in
the form of the motifs that
cover their skin. The tattoo
lattice sometimes extends to
the children the women hold,
as an imprinting of the memory
of ancestral female power.
The process of creating these
images begins with a concept,
first visualized, then ...
Further Information
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Artist Exhibitions:
Body Mapping
August 1st through September
1st, 2008
Allen Gallery
547 West 27th Street, 5th
floor, New York, NY 10001
opening reception Thursday,
August 7th from 6 to 8 PM
http://www.allengallerychelsea.
com
Naked in New Hope
September 1st - October 21st,
2008
New Hope Sidetracks Gallery
2A Stockton Avenue, ...
Further Information
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Artist Galleries:
Coming Soon!
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Artist Reviews:
Coming Soon!
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Collections:
"Frau mit Eiern" 2001
watercolor on paper (15 x 22
inches). Permanent
collection: Weisman Art
Museum, Minneapolis, MN USA.
"I'll Make You Shorter by a
Head" 1999 watercolor on
paper (23 x 15 inches).
Permanent collection:
Minneapolis Institute of Arts,
Minneapolis, MN USA.
...
Further Information
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Commissions:
Coming Soon!
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Tina Blondell Biography:
| Biographical information for Tina Blondell can be found below. The artist may choose what information to display. Sometimes the artist chooses not to display personal information to the general public. |
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Age
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53
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| Gender |
Female
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| Status |
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| Children |
3
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| Religion |
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| Education |
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| Hobbies / Interests |
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| Favorite Artistic Medium |
Painting Oil
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| Favorite Arthistory Movement |
Baroque - (1600 - 1750)
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| Favorite Visual Artist |
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| Favorite Work of Art |
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| Why Did You Become An Artist |
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| Your Personal Biography |
Tina Blondell was born in 1953 in Salzburg, Austria, to an American father and Austrian mother who encouraged her early interest in art. As a child, her father taught her to draw, and travels with her parents exposed her to art throughout Europe. Although early on she attended private art lessons and later took classes in painting, Blondell is essentially self-taught.
Crucial to her education as an artist, was her first-hand encounters with art in Italy, particularly the work of Caravaggio, with its sense of stage-lit drama, and of Artemisia Gentileschi, whose powerful paintings and life as an artist and a woman had been recently rediscovered. Other influences that Blondell cites are Goya and Francis Bacon, both of whose paintings combine an emotional impact with a vision of the human condition. She notes, as well, her interest in the ornamented Secession work of Gustav Klimt. Blondell's involvement with earlier art informed both her technique and interest in narrative, and her quoting of images from the history of art in this painter's decidedly contemporary work.
In the mid 1990s, Blondell settled in Minneapolis, where she continues to live, producing The Cradle of Civilzation, a series of thirteen paintings which used the imagery of the egg and the female body, in an extended meditation on fertility and the sacred in women's lives. The series encompasses the ancient and the modern, ranging from the symbols of age-old cultures to the ongoing Eastern European tradition of geometrically painted Easter eggs.
In 1996, Blondell began a new phase in her work by producing a self portrait in watercolor. Deeply reflecting both her inner and outer life, the outpouring of work that began with that image continues with a panoply of female figures, all exhibiting a pattern on their skin that bespeaks both pain and transformation. Strongly imaginative, these depictions of mythic, biblical, and modern figures use the delicacy of watercolor to embody both a sense of vulnerability and of beauty emerging from the depths of difficult experience.
In 2000 Blondell began to re-familiarize herself with the medium of oil paints. Her current work depicts contemporary women from historical, folkloric, and mythological perspectives. A common thread to the new work is a focus on the interplay of light and dark elements – the chiaroscuro of the Italian masters who originally captured Blondell's imagination as a child growing up in Italy.
Blondell has exhibited her work widely including solo exhibitions at the Fraser Gallery, in Washington, D.C. and the Shelly Holzemer, in Minneapolis. Her work is in many private and public collections including the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Weisman Art Museum.
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