San Francisco artist Tamera Avery‘s provocative figurative works catch your attention with characters in compromising and surprising terrain. What she is proposing is that we take a deeper look at the nature of being humans caught in metaphorical predicament.
Avery considers herself a representational painter and her canvases typically feature a masked or costumed figure, often in darkened palettes. Her painting process starts with collage as source material, beginning with the making of costumes or masks, which she then photographs on her adult children and their friends, and assembles into a prototype.
“It is important to me to have a connection with my subjects. The connection helps me to intuitively move through the process. I combine these photographs with found images to create an initial collage and then I sit with it for months, or years, changing and manipulating it over time. At some point, the collage feels right and I use it as a sketch for a painting,” Avery told 48hills.
In large-scale figurative paintings and portraits, exclusively worked in oils on canvas, her protagonists reside within mysterious natural (or supernatural) landscapes and interior spaces. As a young adult, Avery was obsessed with the work of Francis Bacon, an influence her work identifies with in both color scheme and subject matter: addressing the existential dilemma of the human condition.
“What I appreciated about Bacon’s work was the role that the environmental structure and bold colors played in his figurative paintings,” she said.
Infused in her work, Avery says, are the concepts of despair, division, and hope. She cares deeply about what is happening in the world today and brings those feelings to bear through characters held in intense comportment, in alternately prosaic and threatening surroundings.
“I find the long-term implications of the current social, political, and environmental decay overwhelming and hard to reconcile. In my paintings, I use a combination of absurdity and reality to draw attention to these issues,” she said.
In her painting Both Sides Now (oil on canvas, 76” x 90”), Avery was inspired by the resurgence of Joni Mitchell, and in particular, the composition of the song that bears the same title.
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“I was considering how polarized we are in America and the right and wrongness of the world today. The painting depicts a scuba diver and a young, costumed girl in a snowy landscape. He is reaching out for the young girl’s hand, but it is unclear if she has a hand to hold,” Avery said.
Born and raised in California, Avery’s father worked in the construction trade and the family moved often throughout the state to follow his work. She moved to San Francisco to attend college and has never left. For the most part, Avery is a self-taught artist. With an undergraduate degree in business from the University of California, Berkeley, she supplemented her creative impulse through adult education courses at Cal and the San Francisco Art Institute. Avery likes to encourage people to support the arts in the Bay Area, calling it a magical place to live but one that is difficult for many artists to afford.
“I love living in San Francisco and feel blessed to be able to live and work in such a diverse city. My husband and I were able to build a house in the Forest Hill neighborhood in 2007. I have a studio in my home and a larger workspace in Bayview,” Avery said.
Avery’s process begins with preliminary work in her home studio, a space of about 400 square feet, with prop construction, costuming, and photographing subjects, and staying abreast of marketing tasks. Because of the size of her paintings, the completion phase always takes place in her Bayview studio which is just under 900 square feet. Avery paints five to six days a week, heading to her Bayview studio with her two dogs around 8am, typically painting until 2pm, then returning to continue work in her home studio.
With numerous group exhibitions now under her belt, finding representation for her work took some time. After graduating from college, Avery worked in the garment industry and had a career with Levi Strauss & Co. After filling many roles with the company, the last being director of the Youth Wear Division, she left in 2002 to pursue a career in art full-time.
“I painted for 10 years before showing my work at all. I felt it was important to find my authentic voice without any distractions. I started by painting large-scale portraits and quickly moved into large thematic paintings. Initially, it was difficult to find places to show my work because of the size of my canvases,” she said.
Avery is primarily represented by Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame, California. She has also had two solo exhibitions recently: Slipstream at the Triton Museum in Santa Clara from September 2024 to January 2025 and Threshold at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka from January to March 2025. She will be in the two-person exhibition, Force of Nature, at Gearbox Gallery in Oakland from July 3 through August 9, with an artist’s reception on July 12 and an artist’s talk on July 26 at two pm.
Avery says that everything that happens in the world influences her work in some way and that she is an activist at her core, her paintings are her voice. She views younger generations as hopeful free agents and potential “champions of change” grappling with a complex society with so much at stake.
“My work is youth-centric as I have always been inspired by that culture. I try to honor the fluidity of identity and ideas that are born from it through my work,” Avery said.
Her next series of paintings focuses specifically on the environment, with inspiration coming from the Black Forest in both its fictional and physical history.
“I am also experimenting with the cinematic sequence of my paintings/collages. Specifically, having them read as interconnected narratives. I’m in an early stage and expect to be working for the next two to four years on this project,” Avery said.
Apart from her dedication to creative work, Avery has two dogs that keep her busy and she likes to travel and spend time locally on the Russian River. There, she kayaks on the river and enjoys working in the garden of her family’s home there.
The paintings of artist Tamera Avery provide much for the viewer to decipher and ponder. Substantial in size and commentary, her work continues to plumb the depths of our precarious present and unknown future within the grasp of anonymous players taking on the burden of outcomes.
“I hope people will experience a celebration of identity in my portraits,” Avery said. “Overall, I want to convey a sense of wonder. With large paintings, I hope people feel the weight of them, but also a sense of hope.”
For more information, visit her website tameraavery.com and on Instagram.
