Some feelings are too vast for words.
I paint them instead.
I'm moved by how abundant and expansive the world is and nature gives us so much, without asking anything back. The vastness of an open ocean, the golden sunset, the force of a waterfall crashing into rock it's spent centuries shaping. That feeling, almost too big for words, is what I try to hold in every painting. The magic, abundance, expansiveness and vastness of nature.
I'm Tara Philip. I've painted all my life. It's been my way to express and process emotion, to try and capture that feeling I get when I'm truly amazed, in a way words can't quite reach.
I didn't come to painting through art school or a plan. I came to it because I needed somewhere to put what I was feeling in front of something too big to explain, the ocean at a certain hour, a sky doing something I'd never seen it do before.
Each piece is a record of a feeling I was working through, and the finished canvas is just the last frame of something larger.
If you're here because a piece caught you, I'm glad.
Collections
Infinite Tides
Infinite Tides is my first collection, inspired by the ocean, but it was never really about water. I was so amazed by her, by the vastness and beauty of her, her endlessly expansive nature, that I knew I had to try to capture it. Infinite Tides is what I've made of those lessons. Each painting holds one face of her, one instance she stopped me long enough to really see. Together, they are the record of learning, slowly, to stop fighting the water and start moving with it.
A single drop, landing in water so much larger than itself. Against that vast ocean, it can feel insignificant, as though it should mean nothing. But the ripple travels. It moves further than the eye can follow, and it does not ask permission. Its impact is simply felt.
I keep thinking about how I measure my own choices by their size. The ocean shows me the opposite. A small, almost insignificant decision, the one that does not feel like it deserves the word decision at all, can still be the one that moves everything after it. Life behaves the same way. It does not need to be enormous to reach far. It just needs to happen.
This painting is not just about the ocean's vastness. It is about the moment of decision, the instant the ripple forms, and the way its impact echoes far beyond it.
Commissions
I take on a limited number of commissions. It starts with a conversation, about what you want to feel when you walk past the piece, and how you'd like it captured. I paint from that, not from a brief, but from the feeling you want to bring into a room and the place you'd like it to carry you.
If you're interested in a commission, fill in the form below and I'll be in touch to schedule a conversation.
Prints
If a piece spoke you, a print is a way to bring it home