memories - Tamara Jare

My landscape painting

Nov 1, 2020

My landscape painting is in a way much older as my painting per se is. As strange may it sound, this seems completely logical.

I’ve started painting my landscapes

I’ve started painting my landscapes, although at the time without colors or canvases, far before I’ve decided to become a full time artist. Which I’ve discovered at the very moment I’ve painted my first landscape years ago. Painting a landscape at that time felt unusually easy for a beginner. It had been almost as a mere transfer of a picture from my subconsciousness. A memo that had been stored there times ago, on some walk or a travel. As surprised by the fact I’ve been, I’ve remembered at the same time that for me, looking at the world around me has always been a sort of a painting analysis. My travel memories lack the accuracy of a travel guide regarding the names of the places. But which I do remember are the colors. Blue color of the sky , all the colors of the houses. Tiny patches of different green colors in the park, vibrating lines of light in the turquoise water. Which is actually a really great way to start a painting from.

I usually do use photographs taken by me as an additional reference, but the picture with all the shapes and colors already exists in my memories. Which means, I am almost unable to paint after the photographs not taken by me. All I have to do is to dig into the atmosphere remembered and then, to transform it to the canvas.

Yet with this landscape

Yet with this landscape it has been a bit different. This is a painting of the place near my home, so dear to me. It is a place where we played as kids, where I walked my dog, a place of my daily walks. With brushes in my hand (yes I usually do hold more brushes in my hand while painting) and picking the colors to use I’ve felt as the painting is unwinding all by itself. The brushstrokes were coming from all the summers spent under those trees. Coming from all the memories of autumn colors at the top of the hill, reviving all the forgotten shades of beautiful Octobers forgotten long ago…. By the time I’ve finished this Landscape I knew it is just as it has to be….

Tamara Jare contemporary painter original oil painting landscape in October shows colorful landscape in vivid vibrant colors pink, purple, yellow and blue sky in Slovenia — Landscape in October, Tamara Jare, oil on linen, 40 x 50 cm

Venice memories

Jul 21, 2019

Tamara Jare at Guggenheim Venice, summer 1990

Venice memories, Museum Peggy Guggenheim, Venice, summer 1990

This is old photography of my son Luka and me, taken by my husband on a hot day of the 1990 summer, as our family staying in Venice for a short vacation, visited Museum Peggy Guggenheim.

Those were times with classic photo cameras and this photography is among the last photos we still keep in real photo albums, those with nice covers and full of nostalgic memories, sometimes with an old entry ticket from a museum neatly arranged between photos. There is a special reason that pic is very close to my heart, after so many years still bringing many memories back.

So here it is, a short story about this pic taken in a museum almost thirty years ago, on a sunny summer day…

At that time, around 1990’s, our family lived in Ljubljana (Slovenia was still part of dying Yugoslavia). My husband was employed as a young engineer, I was finishing my medicine studies, and our friend from Italy invited our family to spend a week in his empty apartment in Venice.

For me, visiting Venice for the first time it’s been a week of fascination with Venice, its architecture, its museums, its precious glass and textile manufactures.

I remember we visited literally all the museums, galleries, churches of Venice that were open that summer, and just to save some money we visited museum Peggy Guggenheim on a free visit day, meaning it was crowded there at the time of our visit. I was fascinated by the people from all over the world waiting for the museum to open. That metropolitan public was sure part of cosmopolitan feeling I got entering the palace. Old Venetian palaces are often, like old houses at Slovenian coast, once part of Venetian republic, built in Istrian stone, cold even on the hottest August afternoons. And it was like a dream, escaping from the green Venetian canals and hot streets full of life to come in the palazzo, turned gallery, full of calm, deep shades from the garden playing silhouettes on the gallery walls, quietly observing visitors from around the world admiring artworks in semi silence. Just a sound from a passing boat, il gondoliere laughing, or a seagull call interrupted this atmosphere of dedication to pure art. And as far noises from outside kept persuading me the life is there, outside the gallery, in the canals, in the streets, I got a certain feeling the true life is in reality in here, between those walls, among paintings, sculptures. It was a strong feeling of art being true life that I couldn’t understand at the time, but it hadn’t left me since then, a feeling staying with me for the rest of my life. And so, since that summer there hasn’t been a museum or a gallery in a city I was visiting, not to go there, in eternal search for the art talking to me, strong and without compromises.

It took me a lot of time to recognize that the art call I felt visiting Peggy Guggenheim museum for the first time was meant for me. Many years later I’ve discovered the great passion in my life is art, being happy enough to start art career by myself….