Tara is a painter and observer continuing the ancient, time-immemorial, and universal relationship between humans and birds. Appearing in the earliest of prehistoric art, birds have acted as artists’ and storytellers’ main characters, held portents, represented massive amounts of symbolism, and been devoured for food and fashion. By painting birds, Tara highlights both their wondrousness and increasing demise.

Tara’s detailed work captures avian textures, colours, idiosyncrasies, and behaviour, as well as the intricacies of the subject in its environment. Taking a bird, for example, and translating it into a painting involves a deep intimacy, analysis and synthesis, a communion with its minutiae, and an almost biological relationship to get into its birdness. The process is meditative, reflective, immersive, and cognitive. Hence, painting and birdwatching mirror each other: both require a focus on details, both drive Tara’s curiosity and creativity while challenging her to learn more, and both feel, at times, transcendental. While most of her representational oil paintings focus on birds, she sometimes paints naturally occurring subjects.

Tara is also drawn to found birds whose souls have taken flight. She has a deep curiosity about biology, evolution, and the cycle of life. Soulless birds give her a chance to observe them better in their stillness and to honour their role in the interconnected web of life. A deceased bird can be a biography of feathery detail or realistic anatomy, a poem of dinosaurian ancestry or a requiem of unseen avian mortality and mourning… all equally beautiful and fascinating. Tara thinks of her paintings as two-dimensional taxidermy: evocative reminders of those we are losing, and as memento mori.

Tara lives mostly in Vancouver, Canada, painting and learning amongst her avian neighbours. Her work can be found in personal collections across Canada and in Europe.