The Weight of Water, Part Three

Tara McPherson is an American contemporary artist exploring concepts surrounding the human condition. With a focus on powerful female archetypes, her otherworldly characters hold a compelling tension in their gaze. Inspired by astrophysics, nature, mythology, comics, music, love, loss, and good old life experience. Her portraits delve into the realms of our psychological states, giving us a peek into the complexities of the human psyche. She has exhibited her paintings and serigraphs internationally in galleries and museums. Named the crown princess of poster art by ELLE Magazine, she has created numerous music posters for bands such as Beck, The Pixies, and Metallica. She has worked with Sony Pictures Animation doing character designs & creative development for an animated feature production. Her array of art also includes a variety of designer toys with KidRobot, painted comic covers for DC Vertigo, advertising illustrations for Wyden+Kennedy, Barton F Graf, Publicis, and Bernstein Andrulli. She taught in the Illustration department at Parsons in NYC, and has done many painting workshops in museums and universities worldwide. In 2011 Tara co-founded The Cotton Candy Machine gallery and art boutique with her partner Sean Leonard. The gallery ran from 2011 to 2016 in a former fire department in the Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the dried film. Oil paints have been used in Europe since the 12th century for simple decoration, but were not widely adopted as an artistic medium until the early 15th century. Common modern applications of oil paint are in finishing and protection of wood in buildings and exposed metal structures such as ships and bridges. Its hard-wearing properties and luminous colors make it desirable for both interior and exterior use on wood and metal. Due to its slow-drying properties, it has recently been used in paint-on-glass animation. Thickness of coat has considerable bearing on time required for drying: thin coats of oil paint dry relatively quickly.