Cara Tomlinson, Born With, 2011, oil on wood, 16 x 20 inches

Cara Tomlinson’s exhibit of paintings and installation opens May 7 in Fairbanks Gallery, on the Oregon State University campus.

Tomlinson’s recent painting is concerned with the process of construction: how houses, paintings and bodies are made. In these works, paint conceals and covers over but also creates the illusion of an opening and space, transforming familiar boundaries into the unfamiliar. Her continuing body of work is motivated by questions about the construction of self, boundaries of subjectivity, and the interconnection of self and environment.

Cara Tomlinson has exhibited her work nationally in museums and galleries. She has received numerous national artist residency fellowships as well as an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission. She has lectured on her work at many universities and colleges, including Carnegie Mellon, University of Montana and University of Iowa. In the last few years, the breadth of Tomlinson’s studio practice has expanded to include not just painting, but drawing, video installation, and sculpture—work she undertakes with a shared material and philosophical approach taken from painting.

Currently Tomlinson lives and works in Portland, where she teaches painting at Lewis and Clark College. She earned her undergraduate degree from Bennington College and her M.F.A. from the University of Oregon.

Fairbanks Gallery is free and open to the public Monday–Thursday, 8 a.m.-5 p.m., and Fridays from 8 a.m.-noon. The exhibit ends May 30.

~ Douglas Russell