Art Diaries | Tawny Chatmon

I am finally back with another Art Diaries post. If you are interested in the start of my journey, check out this post. For now I will just be touching on one particular artist and piece.

I first saw Tawny Chatmon’s work on the Saatchi Art Instagram page. Because I’m a millennial.

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Heir / "A present of God". Finally went back to her and finished her. She is a part of my #30daysofembellishments challenge back in December and I just couldn't get her how I wanted her. 5 months later, and after many changes, I'm finally happy with her. I wanted to name her something important and came across the name Adia which is an East African name said to mean "God's Gift".. I decided to name her “A present of God”.. She started off as a photograph I took of kailynn (my daughter) that I then digitally manipulated, morphed, merged with other photographic elements and transformed into who she is now ❤ she may have gone from my least favorite that I just couldn't get right, to my favorite thus far. #photographer #intuos #conceptual #bighair #naturalhair #curls #illustration #digitalmanipulation #photomanipulation #tawnychatmon

A post shared by Tawny (@tawnychatmon) on May 21, 2017 at 1:59pm PDT

I saw this photograph right before bedtime and could not stop thinking about it. And I pulled up her Saatchi Art page so that it would be the first thing I saw in the morning. The next day I kept going back to scroll through her work. I was drawn to how regal these black girls and women looked. It is very rare in American culture to see black women depicted as graceful or stately. I knew that I wanted a print of her work one day.

Her price range is generally out of my budget, but not so much that I couldn’t save up for a piece if I set my mind to it. This stayed in the back of my mind as I followed her artist Instagram. I stayed in the loop of what she was currently working on and enjoyed seeing both the process and the final results.

And then one day about a year ago, she put out a call to action with the reward of a free print for the first certain number of people to complete the task. I was one of them. To say that I was over the moon would not be an exaggeration.

I received the piece from above and she is beautiful and ethereal. I have loved seeing the evolution of Tawny’s artwork and this iteration show so much depth and emotion. I love her skill at digital manipulation to produce such intricate work. This was such a unique way to continue to build my art collection and I feel so lucky.