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<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
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<meta name="description" content="Fluid Worlds. Artist storefront.">
<meta name="keywords" content="art, acrylic, painting, canvas, watercolour, shopping, paint">
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<title>Fluid Worlds</title>
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<header>
<h1>Tamara Wells <span id="thematic-title">Fluid Worlds</span></h1>
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<a href="index.html">Gallery</a>
<a href="about.html" class="current">About</a>
<a href="contact.html">Contact</a>
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<div id="about">
<div id="the-artist">
<img alt="photo of Tamara Wells, the artist" src="assets/images/the-artist.jpeg">
</div>
<div>
<blockquote>Imagination is more important than knowledge because knowledge is limited.<br>
—Albert Einstein</blockquote>
<p>Creative thinking is essential in our modern society. The more diverse and complex the world becomes,
the more important it is to be able to innovatively find original solutions to the problems of our
time. Creativity is not a natural gift, not a quality that you have or don't have; it is a potential
that is initially inherent in every person and is particularly visible in early childhood.</p>
<p>But this potential is increasingly being lost in an increasingly regulated and perfected adult world.
One could problematize that this creative potential is already being expelled at school in favor of
an adult view of the world: instead of free association as an initiation and engine of imagination,
conformity through uniform work assignments applies.</p>
<p>Creativity is a skill that can be trained and developed. Practising and developing association skills
promotes imagination and creativity. Picasso said during a visit to an exhibition of children's
drawings organized by the British Council in Paris in 1945: <q>When I was as old as these children,
I could draw like Raphael. It took many years before I could draw like these children.</q></p>
<blockquote>I believe in intuition and inspiration.<br>
—Albert Einstein</blockquote>
<p>Fluid painting or acrylic pouring is a relatively young painting technique that originated in America
and quickly became established in Europe. It is also known in Germany as the acrylic flow technique
and describes an experimental painting style based on the principle of chance to create abstract
paintings.</p>
<p>With the acrylic flow technique, different acrylic colours are mixed together and applied to the
canvas. You don't do this with a brush, but rather work with a larger mass of paint directly on the
canvas. You let the colours flow in different directions and into each other. Depending on the
technique, the colours are poured directly onto the canvas or mixed in cups beforehand and then
placed onto the painting surface.</p>
<p>In order for the acrylic flow technique to work, the colours must be diluted. The best way to do this
is with special binding agents. Acrylic pouring with cell formation is the trend: silicone is added
to the colours, which causes the colours to pop and creates organic-appearing structures. It is
precisely this process that makes acrylic casting technology so hip at the moment: <q>The cell
structures cannot be planned in advance. The painting results are unpredictable, so every
picture is playful. Experiment.</q></p>
<p>This technology is advertised (by the manufacturers of the materials required for it) primarily with
the slogan that it produces “unique results”. I am suspicious that the statements/testimonials that
can be found about the new technology are couched in hysterical, anthemic terms. Well, if you look
on the internet, the overwhelming majority of works created using this technique are extremely
similar in terms of the image structure, the arrangement of foreground, middle and background and
the motifs. They only differ in the color. When preparing the act of painting, the performing artist
obviously only has one choice of colors and then about eight directions of tilting movements.</p>
<p>I am reminded of this fuss that is made over a simple working material and a technique that sparked
enthusiasm for wet-on-wet watercolour painting — at two-week courses <em>barrier-free watercolour
painting</em> in Tuscany. On the other hand, it is still true that watercolour is a really high
school of painting if you master it.</p>
<blockquote>Art is an intellectual function, healthy, strong and true and just another form of thinking
ability. It is not delirium, but a philosophy.<br>
—Marianne von Werefkin</blockquote>
<p>Tamara Wells studied molecular biology and received her doctorate under Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt,
earned an MBA from the London Business School and works in a leading position in pharmacological
cancer research. One should therefore not accuse her of wanting to approach her art without
certainty and specificity, even though she also uses random principles in her art, i.e. painterly
effects not determined by herself. Max Ernst called this acceptance of results that arose by chance
“liberating processes”. It is said that he used chance to overcome his “fear” of the white canvas
and the first brush stroke.</p>
<p>Tamara Wells has been working with an acrylic technique for a decade, in which she distributes liquid
paint over the surface by deflecting it onto the canvas. This process can be done by tilting the
image support, but very often she uses the brush to give the motif its final shape by incorporating
a contrasting colour into the still liquid or onto the already dried background. This looks as if
the colour that represents the motif of the picture is exactly the same as if by chance and can
extend across three parts of a triptych (Goldrush 2018). She also places dots in the water with the
tip of a brush, which creates the impression of a satellite view of a landscape (Summer 2018). At
the beginning, Wells designed the entire panel painting pointillistically, placing many dots as if
in meditation (Rainbow Ash 2012). In terms of technique, this is conventional painting according to
a plan that allows for and takes into account chance.</p>
<blockquote>Maybe my art is the art of a lunatic, mere glittering quicksilver, a blue soul breaking in
upon my pictures.<br>
—Marc Chagall</blockquote>
<p>It's easiest to first gain access to her art through Tamara Wells' personality. She is so
intellectually carefree, so variedly interested, so erratic, so wandering that I describe her as
<em>quicksilver</em>. She is resistant, arguing, rebellious. And you can't escape the impression
that it's all on principle.</p>
<p>She is certainly capable of painting realistically, but in panel paintings this formal painting is
consistently characterized by an underlying boredom — without the verve of her personality.</p>
<p>“Tamara was born in Bratislava, in what was then communist Czechoslovakia. Despite external
oppression, Tamara always associated with independent thinkers and maintained an independent spirit.
At the age of 18, she joined the “Velvet Revolution,” which eventually led to the overthrow of the
communist regime in the former Czechoslovakia. Freed from oppression, she explored the world with
great enthusiasm,” says her biography. It continues: “You can feel Tamara’s joy of life and her
rebellious spirit in the colours that mix in her artwork. Free from the limitations that formal art
training can impose, she strives for her art to reflect her spirit: freedom, fun, challenge…”</p>
<p>What is striking about Wells’ paintings is her colour sensitivity. She doesn't think in colours, she
feels. Sprinkled with gold, a shade of lilac, turquoise, pink and a sharp mustard yellow are the
colours of summer. In the new technique, in order to gain artistic <em>carelessness</em>, the
related colours become harsher, dirtier and more garish, but always with a stupendous colour
elegance and sheer mood.</p>
<p>Freedom, fun, challenge…<br>
So now acrylic pouring, silicone and cell blasting technology as a progression, as an expansion,
perhaps a dissolution of boundaries. For Tamara Wells, this is certainly an opportunity to enrich
her art with life, which is also determined by coincidences, and here to establish a connection: she
wants to have a picture painted of herself.</p>
<p>Mathias Beck<br>
August/October 2022</p>
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