Artist Profile

Tanmaya Bingham is a Melbourne, Australia-based artist working in mixed media to create works that meld mystical and realistic styles together into one style, which she calls Mysticalrealism. Mysticalrealism embodies characteristics of Surrealism, Magical Realism, Realism, and other styles while maintaining its own distinctive style. Her cutting edge images are laden with personal symbolism and icons from her childhood in Santa Fe, NM and universal issues like death and the resurrection of the human experience, of being human and beyond.

Although Tanmaya was born in Washington DC, Santa Fe is the place she calls home. This is where she began to develop her draftsman and painting skills, whether it was drawing and painting for continuous hours at home or being taught in the classroom by the former Yale professor and artist Alex Shundi.

Tanmaya started her formal training at the Kansas City Art Institute, Missouri, and Studio Art Centers International (SACI) in Florence, Italy to realize that the traditional educational system lacked spiritual nourishment. In search of spiritual expansion she began traveling to India, Nepal and parts of Europe, where she started tapping into her own artistic truth.

After returning to the U.S. Tanmaya continued this path of creating while completing her undergraduate degree (BA) in creative writing at Antioch University, Santa Barbara, CA, in 2002. She then completed her Masters of Arts, Visual Arts (MAVA - equivalent to a Masters of Fine Art - MFA) in painting at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia, in 2005.

Tanmaya was selected to exhibit in "Art Melbourne 2007", Melbourne, Australia, as a winner of the annual "Off the Wall" competition. She has had exhibitions in such galleries as the Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, and M16 Artspace in Canberra, Australia.

Her extensive travels, education, and yoga and other spiritual practices have impacted her work and continuous questioning of both the seen and the unseen. For Tanmaya there is no distinction between her art and any other spiritual practice.

Her recent solo show, "Sanctuary 2008", was held at the Anita Traverso Gallery, 7 Albert Street, Richmond, Melbourne, Australia. (For more about the gallery: www.anitatraversogallery.com.au). In this body of works Tanmaya pushes the boundaries of traditional visual arts through her unique utilization of materials, skillfully blending drawing, painting, and paper works in the form of larger-than-life three-dimensional images encased within white monolithic structures.

Praise for Tanmaya Bingham
"The work of Tanmaya Bingham is mature and thought provoking. One is drawn to its whimsical aspect but upon closer observation, the work being viewed has many layers and a deeper meaning. Using a contemporary surreal imagery and a "fairy tale" like vocabulary the artist draws the viewer into her imaginary world at the same time poses questions about life and death, eternity and love. The work is sophisticated but also conveys a certain innocence. At the same time it is strong and sensitive with a fluidity and lyrical quality of
line and color."
Frances P. Harris, Blumberg & Harris, Inc, Art Management Advisors