Visual arts gallery hosts serene exhibit until March 28

A Portland-based artist hopes everyone can experience a quiet moment while viewing her paintings.

Tara Burkhardt is the latest artist to feature her work at MHCC in a solo show at the Visual Arts Gallery. She has been drawing her whole life but is primarily a painter, and has painted professionally for eight years. Burkhardt said she knew she wanted to be an artist since she was a child. She received her fine arts bachelor’s degree in Painting from the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) in 2010.

Her show is titled “Quiet: Being Within,” and consists entirely of oil paintings. Burkhardt was inspired to focus on the idea of quiet after being disoriented by how loud and busy our culture has become. She aims to give the people looking at her paintings a “quiet moment” in a stressful and rushed world. This is where you are focused on one thing, at peace and not letting outside forces disturb you, she explains — just what she felt while creating these paintings.

The work in this exhibit is a bit of a departure for Burkhardt, as she usually does more colorful paintings. “I wanted to switch my medium up,” she said. She describes her overall style as minimalistic and aims to capture human experiences in her paintings.

One painting features a section gently erased from the rest, aptly named “Erase.” Another features a set of intertwined cubes with a light gray backdrop, titled “Focus.”

Some of Burkhardt’s paintings are for sale, and putting a price tag on her work was very difficult, she said. She did a lot of research on other paintings and talked to various artists so she could get a good grasp on how to reasonably price her own. “It’s a fine balance. You don’t want to over-price your art, but you don’t want to undersell it,” she said.

Burkhardt shared some of the highs and lows she feels when creating a painting.

“Sometimes it feels like a journey, and you almost get this euphoric sense of pleasure because everything is clicking, but on other days, it can feel like everything is failing,” she said. “The biggest challenge is knowing when a painting is done, when you can’t add anything else to your project.”

She noted that getting something that isn’t normally associated with paintings to resonate with the viewer is a challenge. “ ‘Quiet’ is a hard thing to define. Your noise tolerance may vary from mine,” she said.

However, after two years of work on these pieces, Burkhardt said she is quite satisfied with the result.

“I feel complete in the work that I was trying to achieve, and was able to get my point across. You can’t beat yourself up if someone sees your work differently than how you meant it to be seen, because individual perception is one of the beauties of art,” she added. “Once you put it out there, it’s not yours anymore.”

Visitors can see Burkhardt’s paintings in the Visual Arts Gallery until March 28.

For more info on her background and work, check her website at taraburkhardt.com.