Past Exhibition: Exposing the Sneaky Marmot: Tammi Brazee

Artist’s statement: Exposing the Sneaky Marmot

Sometimes the beliefs we hold about the world or about ourselves don’t serve us well. False or misleading perceptions can, at best, lead us into harmless folly, or at worst, cause others and ourselves a lifetime of misery and heartache. Exposing the Sneaky Marmot investigates many versions of self-deception. The actual or implied presence of a trickster marmot throughout the series embodies the tendency to be misled by our perceptions and beliefs, many of which have long generational ties that are passed along like family heirlooms. These mindsets are formed in childhood and carried into adulthood where they often function below our conscious awareness. I reference old photographs to allude to the temporal persistence of long-lasting familial mindsets and use the landscape as a setting to represent the wild terrain of our own unconscious thoughts and drives. These paintings are twisted versions of grown-up dramas that are humorous on the surface but sometimes dark and insidious underneath with far-reaching consequences.

Artist Biography While the hint of a Yankee accent reveals Maryland roots, Colorado has been Tammi Brazee’s home for nearly two decades. She is professional, working artist and science geek, holding two graduate degrees, one in environmental science and the other in visual art. This unusual combination of interests has had a profound influence on Brazee’s work, keeping it suspended somewhere between recognizable reality and imaginary narrative. When she’s not in the studio pondering the relationship between things and slinging paint, she can be found wandering along a mountain trail, guidebook, binoculars and lens in hand, talking to the creatures met along the way.