| Artist's Statement |
Born and raised in Los Alamos, Tatom paints what is on his mind rather
than what is in his backyard. Choosing the lush green fields and farms
of Utah, Missouri and Colorado for his subject, he tries to capture a
pace of life that reflects his love of that countryside and
"the simple purposefulness of that land."
Tatom spends long hours preparing his surfaces and lying in the
glowing, translucent backgrounds that give his work an old mask
equality. When he adds meticulous details, he somehow makes
them appear spontaneous. Even his most intimately scaled work
take on the importance of museum pieces because they are intense
yet understated. Tatom heightens the impact by crafting his own
gold leaf frames which are set around the paintings like bezels
supporting fine gems. Sometimes he feathers the image out to the
edge of the canvas so it floats like a half-waking dream. In other
compositions, he creates a translucent frame that functions as a
lens of memory.
"There is a richness in land that you cannot stop from growing green
that seduces me. There is an atmosphere in its solitude that distills an
image, a pastoral leaning that permeates the way I see upper
Michigan every August or view Oklahoma on the way to Missouri
or even the way I view my day to day Santa Fe. With each layer of
paint, with every brushstroke upon brushtroke, with the paring back
of texture, the sanding, the scraping, with tint here, a scratch there,
I try to make permanent every foot fall in those places of feeling…
and hope for contentment.
2006
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