Tamara Jovandic-Everson
(BA- Fine Art)
Tamara finished the Academy of Art in Sarajevo and has lived and worked in North London since 1992. She has over thirty group exhibitions in the UK, Ireland, France and the USA, and five solo shows. Tamara has exhibited at prestigious art galleries such as Mall Gallery, Cork Street, Royal College of Art, and many more.
Tamara’s paintings, for a period of years, were about exploring female sexuality and nudity through expressionistic imagery, highlighting spiritual and religious themes which suggest a paradox.
Tamara’s preoccupation for dramatic contrast and religious themes, using live models and working quickly and directly onto canvas, comes from a fascination with Italian Baroque and Caravaggio’s use of chiaroscuro and his rich and dark palette.
Intending to relate to the viewer on the most intimate level, these works are always faceless and express the universality of torment through human emotion.
Exploring the human body through suffering, sacrifice, isolation, and emptiness is autobiographical: based on life in exile, and a homeland torn apart in the civil war (former Yugoslavia).
The works are generated from studies of life models. Drawings are then enlarged and painted on a larger scale.
In recent works, there is further development in growing out of the narrative, investigating ‘painting within painting’, freeing and enlarging further parts of figurative artworks, bringing dramatic contrasts by using a variety of mediums to build texture including sand, plaster, and resin…
Statement 1
Tamara Jovandic-Everson
Born: Sarajevo, Former Yugoslavia
Living: London, United Kingdom
Contact: studio@tamarajovandic.com
Education: 1986-1991 Academy of Art, Sarajevo
Thesis: Expressionism in Painting from Figurative to Abstract
MAIN SOLO SHOWS:
2018: Highgate Gallery – solo show
2002: Mediterraneo Gallery, Chiswick, London
2000: Terra Gallery, Chiswick, London
1999: Workhouse Art Gallery, Chelsea, London
1994: Locus Gallery, Hampstead, London
1991: Zvono Gallery, Sarajevo
GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2017 London Biennale, Chelsea
2015 Royal College of Art, 20/21 International
2014 Arthorp Gallery, Arts Depot Open
2011 Galery 69, Limogue, France
2010 Landmark Art Center, Summer Art Fair
2010 Russian Art Fair, Park Lane, London
2010 Christie’s auction, St.Mary’s Church, London
2010 The Dissenters Gallery, London
2009 The Bridge, Ladbroke Grove
2007 National Gallery Museum, Croatia
2006 Pro Art Exhibition, Chelsea Town Hal
2004 Salon des Arts, “Religion, Art & War”, Knightsbridge, London
2003 Discerning Eye Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London2001 Unicorn Gallery, Fulham, London
2001 Terra Gallery, Chiswick, London
2000 Erotica, Olympia, Kensington, London
2000 DFN Gallery, Manhattan, New York, USA
1999 Candid Gallery, Islington, London
1997 Talisman Fine Art Gallery, London
1996 Workhouse Gallery, Chelsea, London
1996 The Octagon, Fulham, London
1995 Sternberg Centre for Judaism, London
1995 The Illaca Gallery, Brighton
1994 Art and Life in Exile Exhibition, University of London
1994 Salama-Caro Gallery, Cork Street, London
1994 The Crypt, St. Martins in the Fields, London
1994 Garter Lane Arts Center, Waterford, Ireland
1993 Leo Baeck Association, London Jewish Community, Hampstead
1991 Group Exhibition of ULUBIH, Collegium Artisticum, Sarajevo
1991 Biennial Exhibition of Student Drawing Gallery of Student City, Belgrade
1991 Exhibition at Foca Museum, Foca
1990 Exhibition (Oil on canvas), Kamerni Theatre Gallery, Sarajevo
1991: Silver Medal on graduation
1992: Member of ULUBIH (Society ofContemporary Artists of Bosnia and Herzegovina)
1995: Sponsorship by Prof August Wiedmann (Goldsmiths College)
2000: The Hesketh Hubbard Art Society Award, Mall Galleries, London
2017: International Award – the best painting at Chelsea Town Hall show
Statement 1
‘De Nihilo Nihil’ – Nothing comes from nothing
The expression is an element, ‘Sui Generis’, which is a part of a human being and therefore part of his Artistic Creation.
I am a curious painter who likes to create mixed media paintings that oscillate between the representational and the abstract.
My process begins with a practice of small observational life drawings often capturing my own mood or feelings and psychology of the sitter.
What follows in the studio is a transformative process: by enlarging these pieces, I move deeper into work’s interiority.
The results are large-scale pieces, sometimes provocative images which express human condition: loneliness, fear of time and space, mental and physical agony, misplacement…
Sometimes, figure escapes from my paintings all together leaving empty spaces to became new paintings, creating new life on its own.
I enjoy bringing dramatic contrasts to my works is using a variety of mediums to build texture including sand, plaster, resin etc.