Tara L. Tieso

Tara L Tieso is an abstract artist who lives and paints in the historic arts Lowertown neighborhood of Saint Paul, on the mighty Mississippi. She works in encaustic, an ancient beeswax and resin medium fused to its substrate with a torch.  Her work is bold, yet intimate.

Of her medium,Tieso says,

“Wax mimics the ebb and flow of our lives, the warming and settling of our passions, the ever new dance of leaving our marks and then going back into the yielding surface of our evolving story again and again.

The ability to use fire is not just an obviously primal experience, but a powerful and unpredictable tool to wield creatively. The immediacy of the setting wax, and the ability to be either planful or spontaneous is exciting, and a lovely metaphor for how the simplest human interactions – both deliberate and serendipitous – can bring profound beauty into our lives.”

Tara is Board President of nationally celebrated WARM, Women’s Art Resources Minnesota – where she works with other women in the arts to steward the rich 40-year feminist legacy of Minnesota’s brilliant women artists, and ensure that WARM is part of the lives of creative girls and women far into the future.

A grateful 2011 recipient of the McKnight Foundation-funded Metropolitan Regional Arts Council’s Next Step Grant, 2012 recipient of the Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, and one of 30 ArtSage Minnesota Artists for 2013, her work hangs in collections in the Twin Cities, greater Minnesota, and Philadelphia.

Listen to an audio podcast interview with Tara.