User:Jeanmbrust/Alexandra Tyng

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Alexandra Tyng (born 1954) is an American figurative and landscape painter based in Philadelphia, traveling to Maine to paint each summer. She is known for her aerial landscapes, figures and portraits. Her work combines traditional methods with a contemporary viewpoint.

Early Life
Alexandra Tyng was born in 1954 in Rome, Italy to architect parents Louis I. Kahn and Anne Tyng. She grew up in Center City Philadelphia, in a neighborhood of creative professionals and academics. Tyng made the decision not to attend art school where abstract Expressionism was at that time dominant. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1975 with a B.A. in art history and went on to earn an M.S. in Education from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. Having received no formal art training, Tyng taught herself traditional oil painting techniques by trial and error, by studying the techniques of the old masters and contemporary realist painters.”

Work
“Tyng is unusual among contemporary artists because she is equally comfortable in painting the figure and the landscape, and combining the two genres.” In Tyng’s paintings, “light and atmosphere are rendered with specificity.”  While studying art history in college, Tyng saw John Singer Sargent’s painting The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit hanging in the Boston Museum of Art and was inspired to learn to paint the elusive quality of air. She began observing the relationship between the colors in direct light, ambient light and shadow, and developed her observations into a color theory, published in 2006? She has received many national and regional awards, and her work has been featured in major art publications. Her work has been shown in many museum exhibitions and gallery shows around the country. Tyng is a member of the Portrait Society of America and has been active in the society’s Cecilia Beaux Forum’s Exhibitions and Mentoring initiatives. She is represented by Dowling Walsh Gallery in Rockand, ME; the gWatson Gallery in Stonington, ME; Gross McCleaf Gallery in Philadelphia, PA; and Haynes Galleries in Nashville, TN. Tyng lives and works outside of Philadelphia in Montgomery County, PA.

Portraits and Figures
Tyng’s fascination with people led her to begin painting portraits as a high-school student. She has painted portraits commissioned for universities, hospitals, museums, government buildings, and private collections in the U.S.A and abroad. In 2005 she founded “Portraits For the Arts,” an ongoing philanthropic project to enhance and support the arts community in Philadelphia. The subjects of her portraits include the architect-planner team of Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, optical painter Edna Andrade, musicians Claude and Pamela Frank, and children’s book illustrators Beth and Joe Krush. As part of this initiative, In 2008 Tyng was commissioned by the Portrait Society of America to paint Frolic Weymouth, artist and founder of the Brandywine River Museum and Conservancy, on the occasion of his receipt of the Leadership in the Arts Award. Her portraits hang in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., The New Britain Museum, the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania, The Mütter Museum, several universities, and many private collections.

Landscape
Tyng is known for her large-scale aerial landscapes. Her interest in hierarchies of scale and her ability “. . .to move from the expansive to the intimate and back again makes for a distinctive visual experience.” In 1967 she began spending summers on the coast of Maine and painting the landscape. As a child Tyng saw Leonardo Da Vinci’s drawings of cities from a bird’s –eye view and became interested in the idea of drawing and painting cities and landscapes from a high vantage point. In her teens she was inspired by Philadelphia painter Diane Burko’s early aerial landscapes. In the early 1990s Tyng began taking reference photos from small planes and helicopters, developing her own approach to aerial landscape painting. Tyng works on both an intimate scale and a grand one. As part of her ongoing interest in how light generates color, Tyng devotes time each year to plein air painting. She paints small studies outdoors that she uses, along with photos, to develop larger studio paintings. “No matter Tyng’s location or viewpoint, the viewer senses her deep connection to the land, her appreciation of its varied details, and her understanding of mankind’s place in the natural order.” Her work is Featured in the book The Art of Monhegan by Carl Little. In 2008, Tyng was selected as one of Maine’s most outstanding artists by Maine Home + Design.

Recent Work
Tyng’s paintings of figures in real or imagined settings combine her interest in landscapes and portraits. In these works Tyng uses family and friends as models, exploring  themes of personal and psychological interaction and motivation. Each theme has an inner kernel of meaning, around which images are arranged. The many layers of symbolism create open-ended narratives that can be appreciated on many levels. In 2010, Tyng was one of 50? artists invited to participate in the groundbreaking Women Painting Women exhibition at the Robert Lange Studios in Charleston, SC. In the same year Tyng’s figurative work was shown at the Butler Institute of American Art.





Exhibitions

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 * 2013
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 * 2012
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Awards

 * 2014
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 * 2013
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 * 2012
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