Tamara Ashburn
Private collectors and foundations currently collect Tamara’s art Nationwide.
I was born in Jackson Hole, and I am privileged to be a 4th-generation Wyoming artist. I work as an expressionist painter in my 100-year-old barn, which I named Little Dipper Art Studio. My deep connection to Wyoming and its frontier ways of life in the mountains infuses into my art. You can feel a sense of freedom pulse onto the canvas as I strive to master color, movement, and light, allowing viewers to dream into my work.
My painting style is expressionism, rooted in a modernist movement that began as an avant-garde approach in the early 20th century. I draw inspiration from the works of Wyoming native Jackson Pollock, a renowned expressionist painter. Through my art, I aim to distort the world for emotional effect, evoking moods and ideas that extend beyond painting to architecture, theater, dance, poetry, film, and music.
I began painting and writing poetry as a child. I’ve taken classes from the National Wildlife Museum, the Jackson Hole Center for the Arts, Central Wyoming College, and the Contemporary Austin Art School, as well as studying under numerous professional artists.
My parents, avid naturalists, taught me the workings of nature. My father, Richard Ashburn, a member of the American Mountain Man Association, allowed us to spend summers recreating life in the pre-1840 period. We set up camps while my father was on horseback through Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, and Idaho. My father was an outfitter and maintained the first wilderness camp in the backcountry of Mount Moran in the Grand Tetons. He has been featured in National Geographic Magazine, The Backwoodsman, and the Museum of the Mountain Man. We also spent our winters traveling, which significantly influences how I move through the world and how I choose to paint.
“Painting makes me feel like I’m in a dance with my art. It’s alive—with all my ancestors and life and energy flowing onto the canvas.” I find inspiration in the works of Georgia O’Keeffe, Joan Mitchell, Nicolai Fechin, Gerhardt Richter, Tom Gilleon, Neltje, Fritz Scholder, Theodore Waddell, as well as my mother, and grandmother, who were award-winning artists.
Currently, I am exhibiting at Scandia Home in Jackson Hole, WY, and I am self-represented at Little Dipper Art Studio by appointment. If you’d like to reach me, please email me at tamara@littledipperartstudio.com.
Tamara’s Art Philosophy
It is my whole being in creating art that my work is not too representational.
It’s important for me to allow the viewer to have their own experience of the creation. To create their own story:
Labelless.
Limitless.
Undefined.
With only a hint of suggestion of what I was feeling when creating.
Like a two way mirror, both the viewer and originator blend into the artist and enter into a dance—of wild, uncontained freedom that evokes humanness, playfulness, and inspiration beyond the edge of the canvas.
The Studio
