Bio

Tara’s vision quest has demonstrated her courage to trust her instincts and to risk the unknown. Creative, energetic and resourceful, she trained as a massage therapist and, at age 23, invented Sculpting Bodies to Wellness. She has continued to learn from many teachers over the past 20 years and to study ancient modalities in the healing arts and in shamanism.

Her fervent desire to immerse herself in art and dance motivated her to leave the East Coast for California in the early 90s. Gabrielle Roth’s 5 Rhythms inspired Tara to study at the Moving Center School in Mill Valley; and, simultaneously, she enrolled in an interdisciplinary Fine Arts Program at the College of Marin.  Eager to refine and deepen her experience, she began a four year apprenticeship with Dario Campanile, a successful painter who helped her to find new techniques and to embrace abstract art.

With a foundation in art and dance and a continually evolving healing arts practice, Tara imagined the potential of performance art when she chose to attend Studio ACT in San Francisco, where she explored theater, improvisation, voice, character study and stage presence. Most importantly, she says,” I learned about empathy, compassion and the human spirit.”

Her work with Sound-Movement Integration in 2004 at The Institute for Indigenous Arts provided a kind of homecoming for Tara who became one of their teaching staff in 2008. With Sahn Nicole Hill (founder) as her mentor, Tara found outlets for her spirituality, art, movement and music and new ways of combining them, such as collaborative cross-cultural performances. Her subsequent design of heARTistry-in-MOTION represents not only a testament to her ability to synthesize different modalities but also to manifest new forms: group and one-on-one painting and movement sessions with both adults and children.

Taking the live painting experience to another octave, Tara constructs a container that allows the viewer to feel expressed passion; from this place it’s easy to remember and to synthesize one’s own life story—using creativity, taking risks, and sharing from the heart. She teaches through stories that generate a universal language.  As musicians hold the heartbeat of the dance, Tara paints
large scale canvases while engaging the audience in the process.

She has used this cross-genre approach to create Mandalas; and, Tara was featured in Conscious Dancer magazine in the Fall of 2009. Some of her collaborations have taken place at Grace Cathedral and The Temple in San Francisco, Isis Oasis in Northern CA, Burning Man in Nevada, in Maui and New Zealand.

Tara’s work has been shown in private homes and in corporate offices. She’ll display finished canvases from her live painting performances in her show, rEVOLution, at the Google Administrative Offices in Mountain View, CA. At the opening on November 29, 2011, Tara will demonstrate and perform a live painting.