Tammi Brazee is a full-time professional artist who creates artwork in series that revolve around various concepts. For June 2023, her series, Tame Your Marmots, is on display at the Telluride Arts HQ West and was funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and Colorado Creative Industries. For this series, marmots are used as metaphors for self-deception and the unconscious biases and beliefs that drive our behavior.
We asked Tammi a few questions!
What is your chosen artistic medium?
Paint! I use both oil and acrylic but prefer the sensuality of oil paint. I work on stretched canvas and sometimes paper but am beginning to noodle around with digital painting. However, digital painting doesn’t hold the same pleasure for me as pushing and pulling real paint around a canvas so I use a digital medium more out of necessity than desire. Sculpture is also great fun. I enjoy modeling in clay, mold-making, and casting resin. Generally, I’m happy when creating in nearly any medium, and I hope this joy never leaves.
What are you reading/watching/or listening to? (feel free to pick one)
I always have a couple of books going at once, usually one of each, non-fiction and fiction. I’m currently working through Rudolf Arnheim’s Art and Visual Perception, which is about how we psychologically process visual information, and I just started Toni Morrison’s book, Sula. Her mastery of language, narrative, and descriptive finesse is incredible! She’s the literary equivalent of a master painter; she paints with words.
If you could have a conversation with one artist, alive or deceased, who would it be and why?
This is a strange choice for a painter, but I’d like to meet and chat with children’s book author and illustrator, Oliver Jeffers. He began his artistic career as a painter and continues to paint, but he’s best known for his wonderful picture books. They are funny, heartwarming, quirky, and thought-provoking, the kinds of books that adults like to read to their kids. I find it interesting that he’s managed to keep one foot in the Art World and the other in kid’s books and does so with agility and grace. My dog, Ollie, is named after Jeffers.
What is your favorite awkward growth moment or barrier-breaking time?
Ha, that question makes me simultaneously laugh and squirm! Grad school was both awkward and barrier-breaking for me. Weekly critiques by professors and visiting artists were a process of tearing down and rebuilding. It was a time of tremendous artistic growth but having a highly respected artist tell you that your artwork is terrible is extremely awkward! However, it forced me to re-invent myself and lean into failure and criticism. It was both painful and wonderful, and I’m deeply grateful for the amazing people that helped me grow.
What inspires you and/or keeps you engaged and moving forward?
I’m completely enamored with people and how wonderful and weird we are. I constantly poke at the question, “Why do we do that?” and then find ways to express this question visually. Since we humans are so interesting, I’ll never run out of material to explore. I’m not a psychologist because it’s far more interesting for me to ask questions via visual satire expressed through an artistic medium than to seek answers through monotonous research. If I were a psychologist, I’d be far better off financially but wouldn’t be having this much fun.
Tell us about your current and upcoming events, releases, or anticipated projects!
I’m currently re-organizing my business to produce steadier income through e-commerce by offering prints of original paintings and redesigning some of my prior work into graphics for t-shirts and greeting cards. I’m also learning to write and illustrate picture books (hence the desire to meet and chat with Oliver Jeffers).
As far as my next body of work/paintings, I’m not sure. The last year and a half have been extremely busy. I’ve had 4 solo exhibits in thirteen months and have produced a ridiculous amount of artwork in a very short period of time. I needed rest after this massive creative output and took a four-month break from painting. However, new ideas are beginning to surface, and I plan to start painting again in July, so stay tuned!
