Tamara Jare’s Bold Paintings that Invite us to See the World Differently

Tamara Jare is a contemporary painter whose work invites us to see the world with fresh eyes. In this interview, she shares her journey from growing up in an artist’s home to becoming a full-time painter. Tamara talks about how her mother, a professional artist, influenced her early years and how her studies in medicine and work in education have shaped her approach to art. She explains her love for using bold colors and light to capture the beauty and wonder she sees in everyday life. Through her paintings, Tamara hopes to make people pause and appreciate the world around them. This conversation offers a deeper look into her creative process and the personal ideas behind her artwork.

Tamara Jare is a contemporary figurative painter living and working in Ljubljana, Slovenia. With her late mother being a professional painter, art has been part of Tamara Jare’s life since the earliest age. Her formal education led her to study medicine at Ljubljana University, life took her on a varied path – raising a family as a stay at home mother and later engaging in international project work in education of the elderly – before she fully embraced her calling as a full time artist. Her journey has been one of evolution, balancing diverse experiences that now inform her artistic language. Her work has found a global audience, with paintings exhibited at curated shows in the United States, Italy, and Slovenia.

Her art has been featured on the official social platforms of prestigious institutions like the Guggenheim Museum in New York, Bilbao, and Venice, as well as Christie’s, Saatchi Gallery, and Sotheby’s. To Tamara Jare, the world is a miracle to behold, a vibrant interplay of light and color that reveals itself in fleeting, unrepeatable moments. Her aim as a painter is to capture this miracle and share it with those who see her work. She is drawn to figurative painting, working primarily in oil on canvas, a medium that allows her to harness bold, vivid colors and intricate textures. Her paintings weave together contemporary aesthetics with echoes of classical influences, exploring themes of identity and reinterpreting art history in a personal and universal way. Each painting is an emotive narrative, built with technical precision, inviting viewers to pause and see the world as she does, a place of wonder worth celebrating.

1.  You describe the world as a miracle to see—how do you translate that sense of wonder into your paintings?  

For me, the external realm is an object of perception that constitutes a vital, dynamic phenomenon that insists upon an affective encounter. I’ve been lucky to always see the world through a pair of kaleidoscopic lenses in my spirit. I can always see beautiful details, even when the weather gets stormy. That is not a choice but a gift that I am absolutely grateful for, echoing Dostoevsky’s conviction that “Beauty will save the world.” Then, on the other side, true art has to transcend the bounds of elementary artisanal practice, it emerges as an arterial conduit from the artist’s psychic terrain. You can not traverse a world in melancholy and paint Arcadian idylls, no matter your technical proficiency. Authenticity is always the sine qua non of true art.

Obviously, I always have that sense of wonder, for as an artist, I always feel like an eternal traveler, seeking and collecting impressions in color, pattern, and beyond the mere figuration, in seeking deeper connections, sense, and relevance to my inner self and broader society. My oeuvre arises from conscious apprehensions and subconscious, physiological impressions of colors and light. With acute visual acuity, I am attuned to the minutest particulars, chromatic hues, and structural patterns that I have to work on to synthesize a painting that reverberates with my subjective realm and the broader societal continuum. Einstein famously posited a binary existential stance – one may live as though nothing is miraculous or as though everything is. I steadfastly align myself with the latter. My canvases represent an endeavor to articulate this orientation.

2.     Your mother was a professional artist. How did her influence shape your creative journey?  

In many ways. Growing up in a house where art played a major role was a privilege. Being exposed to art can not hurt anyone, I believe, but for a person with artistic inclinations, that is just the perfect environment. Playing in my mother’s studio, listening to the talks about art with her artist friends, observing my mother working, and visiting all the art openings in the town since I can remember these all were influences that have shaped me as an artist and as a person. Beyond all these osmosis-like influences, pretty soon, my mother took a more demanding position regarding my art education.

She took extra steps to make sure I knew there was no talent that could outshine hard work and perfect technique. So, from the very early age of five years, she kept giving me lessons. She taught me all major painting techniques. At age eight,, I made my first oil portrait, a copy of Velázquez’s Infanta Margarita, using a layered technique. She would also go with me to paint in nature; we were sculpting in clay in our backyard. And I had to draw endlessly. Today, my command of the line is something I owe entirely to her stubborn faith in foundations. Her lessons went deeper than technique, though. She taught me that art means hard work. And to watch the world with my own eyes, to be truthful about my work, and to keep going.

3.   From studying medicine to working in education, then becoming a full-time artist—how have these experiences impacted your art?  

The life of an artist always impacts their art. As well as the lessons learned along the way. I believe my medical studies gave me two important insights, both of which resonate with my artistic methodology. Firstly, the discipline instilled an ethos of rigorous certainty – medicine allows no conjecture or half-formed resolutions, for ambiguity imperils the patient. This principle extends beyond the clinical sphere into the existential and aesthetic. In an era where facile conclusions are so common, not least among artists, I find it imperative to interrogate and resolve the uncertainties within my work with intellectual depth before advancing. Secondly, my study of human anatomy – down to the fossae, tubercles, and fascial planes – alongside all subclinical and clinical subjects furnished me with an understanding of corporeality.

Yet, more crucially, it revealed the human being as exceeding mere anatomical summation, it is a miracle of existence, which I work hard to interpret in my portraiture and self portraits. Subsequently, my engagement with European educational projects gave me a different yet complementary set of competencies. Among them, the experience of rejection (however meritorious the submission) taught me to navigate the caprices of external adjudication. In the contemporary art ecosystem, embodied by galleries, open calls, and digital platforms, among others, resilience in the face of denial becomes a requisite virtue. This capacity to persevere has proven indispensable in sustaining my practice. Together, these strands — medicine’s demand for certainty and depth and education’s lessons in resilience and articulation — converge in my art, lending it both a disciplined introspection and an adaptive tenacity attuned to the broader cultural milieu.

4.   Bold colors and light play a big role in your work—what draws you to these elements?  

Fernando Pessoa’s meditation from The Book of Disquiet perfectly translates to the world manifesting to me as an inexhaustible tableau of chromatic richness: “My soul is a hidden orchestra; I know not what instruments, what fiddle strings and harps, drums and tamboura I sound and clash inside myself. All I hear is the symphony.”. Color and light unfold to me across natural and cultural landscapes. Imagine all the greens of a young forest, deep blues of a maritime storm, the afternoon sun bathing the studio sitter in warm hues, reds of a rose bouquet, all the yellow nuances of those lemons from Capri, the variegated sandstone facades of Maltese architecture, all the colors of white glowing day cowered in December snow, purples of autumnal grapes or the deep green of the Tiber beneath the turquoise Roman summer sky. My attraction to these elements stems from their capacity to articulate this miraculous plentitude. They are both a medium and a metaphor, a means to directly paint the symphonic resonance Pessoa evokes. In this, my work aligns with the European tradition of seeing the material world as a conduit to the transcendent, where color and light build intellectual and sensory communion with the real.

5.   You’ve participated in projects with Guggenheim, Christie’s, and Sotheby’s—how has that exposure shaped your artistic perspective?  

Living in Ljubljana, Slovenia, far from the traditional art epicenters, has made my journey as an artist unique. The art market often feels elitist and competitive, yet finding my work featured by prestigious institutions like Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and the Guggenheim has been an unexpected and rewarding experience. Thanks to digital and social platforms, I’ve gained visibility that transcends my geographic location, proving that ambition shouldn’t be limited by circumstance. These opportunities have also allowed me to build meaningful relationships with fellow artists, offering a sense of community and dialogue that balances the isolation of solo work. These experiences have broadened my perspective, showing me that art can cross boundaries and connect us on a deeper level.

6.   What do you hope people feel or take away when they experience your paintings?    

Above all, I endeavor to instill in the beholder an appreciation of the world as a miracle to see, an ambition that, in its apparent simplicity, constitutes a formidable undertaking. I believe this primary desire aligns with a distinctly European sensibility that echoes the Romantic tradition’s veneration of the sublime and the ineffable. Beyond this foundational intent, my work seeks to unfold as a palimpsest of layered narratives, each encounter with the canvas yielding fresh revelations. I am keenly invested in constructing multi-stratal compositions, wherein meanings accrete and shift over time, a deliberate nod to the hermeneutic depth characteristic of European intellectual traditions.

Within this framework, I weave subtle art-historical connotations, embedding my paintings with a dialogue that spans centuries, inviting the viewer into a broader continuum of visual culture. In the realm of portraiture, this manifests as a dual commitment: the psychological delineation of the sitter assumes a parity of significance with their physical likeness. As a material record, the canvas bears the traces of my deliberative process — every compositional choice, every resolved tension — rendering visible the intellectual labor of its creation. Ultimately, my aspirations converge on a dual horizon: for the subject of a portrait, I seek their contentment with the representation, a fulfillment of the tacit contract between artist and sitter; for the viewer, I aim to enrich their perceptual experience, however incrementally, perhaps through the subtle inflection of a hue or the emergence of a previously unnoticed detail. In this, my work aspires to serve as both a mirror to the miraculous and a repository of nuanced discovery, extending an invitation to see and to see anew.