Meet the Upper School Art Teacher: Mrs. Tammy Callens

In 2018, Mrs. Callens was awarded the Versailles Foundation’s prestigious Munn Fellowship Artist Residency Award, which allowed her to spend three months living and painting in the gardens of Claude Monet in Giverny, France, with an honorary exhibition at the end of the fellowship. She was the Oil Painters of America National Award Winner in 2006 and was selected for the National “Art for Parks” Top 100 Best Paintings in 2002.

“I am thrilled and honored to have the opportunity to share with students my knowledge of the masters, art history, and techniques in hope of passing on a love and appreciation for the process and discipline of visual art. I love classical training because it instills a solid foundation that enables a student to pursue a lifetime of learning and achievement.”

 

Mrs. Callens specializes in oil and watercolor painting, charcoal drawing, and mono-printing. She is proficient in landscape, figure, and portraiture art, while utilizing traditional painting techniques in a decidedly contemporary fashion. While her subject matter remains timeless, she favors dramatic yet intimate compositions that feature shimmering color harmonies and painterly brushwork. Mrs. Callens’ luminous oils and murals reflect clarity of vision, passion, and a spiritual focus reminiscent of earlier American impressionists such as Edgar Payne, Guy Rose and William Wendt, and many others.

 

She says her love for art began at an early age with the encouragement of her mother (an art teacher), the training she received under American realist painter Mary Beth McKenzie, N.A. at the Art Students League in New York City, and from painting alongside many well-accomplished artists over the years.

 

Mrs. Callens was raised in the lush redwood landscape of the Pacific North Coast in California and currently resides in the Jackson, Wyoming, where she enjoys the vast Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. In her free time, she loves visiting her children, spending time in the outdoors with her dog Sargent, fishing, hiking and plein air painting.