Reuben Tam, Visiting Artist Lecture 1967

Reuben Tam gives a lecture on his work at Skowhegan. Tam structures his lecture by talking about the importance that working from the landscape has had on his development as an artist. Tam believes that the landscape is something that is neglected, and it is the field that he is the most inspired by and interested in. Tam shows slides depicting various natural landscapes, works of other painters working in landscape, and his own paintings. Tam believes that the common subject of the landscape can be lifted to great heights of expression if there is a love for it and awareness of it. The subject of the landscape can be transformed by the artist, coming back to the viewer a hundred times more full of magic and excitement. Tam believes that working with the landscape helps him flatten a composition and make the painting stronger, creating a fine balance between the flat and the three dimensional. This gives Tam an economy and a compressed strength without sacrificing the feeling of space which is essential in landscape painting. Tam then talks about his explorations with scale, stating that he is interested in making a small picture look larger than the canvas it is painted on, and how he likes to paint a large picture on a small canvas. Motifs in Tam’s landscape painting include the sun and the moon in the sky floating over water. Tam warns the students about not being influenced by what is trendy in the art world but instead to create art of one’s own life, duties, and pursuits. Tam stresses the importance of keeping a sketchbook. He often fills up seven to eight books of his sketches every summer with ink and pencil. On rainy and cloudy days, he creates many watercolors, not based on the drawings, but based on what he sees and remembers of the landscape. Other mediums that Tam uses include polymer-based watercolor, and acrylics. During the winters in New York, Tam creates large oil paintings in the studio, sometimes referring to the drawing and the watercolor, and sometimes just referring to the feeling of the subject. In the walls of his studio, Tam puts up reproductions which are snapshots of mountains he clips out of travel magazines as well as photographs of nature. Tam ends his lecture telling the artists to always find ways to organize their time for their practice.