Tamara English lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She was born in New Haven, Connecticut and raised in Connecticut and Berlin. English’s work has been exhibited extensively in the US and internationally, including at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Eisemann Center in Dallas, the US Embassy in RIga, Latvia, and the Seattle Art Museum. She holds a BFA in painting from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, where she received the Charles Carey Life Drawing Prize. Her paintings have appeared in the television series “Portlandia,” and are featured in the documentary “Art: PDX” in which ten Portland artists were selected as representatives of the Portland art community and interviewed about their work.

Her paintings are also featured in the book Curatorial Volume 2, Leaders in Contemporary Art, published by Melbourne, Australia based Capsule Books. In 2018, English was named a recipient of the Ford Family Foundation Oregon Visual Artist Residency Award, and was awarded a Golden Spot artist residency at Playa Summerlake in Oregon. She has been awarded several grants from the Regional Arts & Culture Council in Portland, including a grant for an exhibition in the Portland Public Library. She is represented by Caplan Art Designs in Portland, Addington Gallery in Chicago, Cooper & Smith Gallery in Connecticut, and Seattle Art Museum’s Sales & Rental Gallery. Her work is widely collected and represented in many collections, including the collections of the City of Portland Portable Works, Lock Haven University, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Cascade Aids Project, and Columbia Sportswear.

From the Artist... Speaking about her paintings, English states, “My most recent body of work explores themes aligned with the literary genre of Magical Realism, blending the magical with rational elements to create an atmosphere that serves as a vehicle to cultivate a sense of wonder, well being and upliftment. My oil paintings offer a sense of moving through our inner landscapes with the buoyancy found in connecting with the presence of the sacred, revealing the experience of the magical, mystical and alchemical in everyday life.”