Tilly Strauss | Art Queens Society

Showing up is the secret sauce! My family is full of teachers, artists, curators, and writers who inspire my focus while informing my passion for making and creating opportunities to demystify art. I coach other artists to show up, write art reviews for the local newspapers, and am the Town Clerk and Vital Records Manager for my community.

My painting involves the discipline of daily practice and results in series that tell, in color and with whimsy, the big stories of living and bearing witness. When I was living in Miami I painted acrylic on paper images of the exotic birds and plants. Once I got the idea to return home to the farm, I painted the overlapping highways and rushing traffic at night on canvases. Since returning to the farm, I have been painting the trees in the back yard forest and the moon phases above me on small wood panels. These paintings are meant to be shared and to celebrate the healing available within any respectful relationship to the natural world.

Decades ago, (omg!), I graduated from CU Boulder with a BFA in painting and a BA in art history. Since then, I’ve shown my work in hundreds of exhibits over a broad geographic expanse. My work has been featured in the New York Times, Barcelona Periodico, Poughkeepsie Journal, Lakeville Journal, and Taconic Newspaper Group. I have been commissioned by MetroNorth Railroad for a mural in Poughkeepsie, and by the Miami Parking Authority for two consecutive years of painted parking meters in the Wynwood Arts District. I love painting alone and in a tiny scale, as well as LARGE and in public, with lots of distractions.

I am extremely grateful to be living so well, and always curious to help others along their own creative journeys. As both an eldest sibling and a teacher, I have a nurturing nature that is open to diverse stories. It all makes good art.

When I was about 6 years old, I watched Sandy Calder, the sculptor and neighbor of my grandmother’s, “work” in his studio in France. I knew he was living a magical life and I wanted to live like him.

My studio is full of wet panels, stacks of painted papers, empty frames, found nests, brilliant flowers, suitcases, miniature chairs, maps, and teacups. Looking about, I see a vocabulary of images that make a virtual dictionary of metaphors for my journey through this life. Because I feel transient as a species and have lived a life of constant relocation and movement, the perpetual conflict between leaving and being is evident everywhere in my work. I don’t feel that I have time to get fussy about my narratives, or my process. I just do my best to show up.

Each picture freezes a moment that I can physically carry with me. In the process of creating them, I learn about my place within the context of time and history.

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Coaching, business, mindset and community for artists and artpreneurs.