{"id":19379,"date":"2026-07-15T12:57:41","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=19379"},"modified":"2026-07-15T12:57:42","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T16:57:42","slug":"room-for-color","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/summer-2026\/room-for-color\/","title":{"rendered":"Room for Color"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Artist Tammy Blais \u201903 has a minimalist\u2019s approach to life, but her paintings tell an entirely different\u2014and decidedly vivid\u2014story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enter the home studio of Tammy Blais \u201903, and you\u2019ll see an easel as well as, perhaps, a few paintings in progress. But you won\u2019t find a paint-spattered floor, drop cloths, blank canvases, or crushed paint tubes. You won\u2019t note the smell of turpentine. Instead, there\u2019s a single, spotless easel and a painting in progress: a rustic seaside village scene, done in blues, yellows, and greens.

There\u2019s also a snippet from a vintage Simplicity sewing pattern that reads, \u201cGirl. Size 10. A. Dress Back.\u201d More on that later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, know that Blais is a committed minimalist. \u201cI love having less. Less clutter, less paint, less of the things that can overwhelm the mind,\u201d she says. She walks to a tiny cart wedged in a corner, next to a cast-iron radiator. Now we see the palette knives, scissors, pencils, pens, and turpentine, neatly arranged. From underneath, Blais produces a small wooden tray where she keeps her paints. She favors Winsor & Newton oils, especially ultramarine, burnt umber, titanium white, yellow ochre, and cadmium orange. Again, expectations are subverted. Many of the tubes are small\u2014no more than the size of a man\u2019s index finger. There doesn\u2019t seem to be enough paint for her larger canvases, like the one that spans her mantelpiece, but Blais has art down to a science.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And she\u2019d rather talk color anyway. \u201cI love a good orange in a sea of blue,\u201d she says.

The viewer, though, returns to the unusual. Blais\u2019 oil paintings are made with a palette knife. You won\u2019t find a single brushstroke.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding Freedom in a Palette Knife<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In addition to selling her art and conducting workshops, Blais runs her own photography business, Tammy Blais Photography. Painting is both an outlet and an antidote for Blais, and her approach to it is a kind of release.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen I began painting, I realized paintbrushes were not providing me a way to paint how I wanted; they were pushing me to be particular when I needed to be freer. When I began using the palette knife, I knew that was it,\u201d Blais says. \u201cI was able to make my messy lines, wonky shapes, and the textures I needed.\u201d

\u201cBy forgoing rules and embracing a free-flowing technique, I allow each composition to reveal itself organically and expressively.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She favors coastal scenes: boats in a marina, clapboard houses in seaside towns, beaches dotted with umbrellas. And that vintage sewing pattern? She is fond of adding ephemera to her compositions\u2014things like old dress patterns, sheet music, and maps\u2014which encourage and reward lingering with the paintings. The overall vibe is whimsical, bustling, joyful, and odd\u2014odd in the sense that if, when you think of oil painting, you think of stern portraits painted by 17th-century Dutch masters, this is decidedly not that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201c<\/span>By forgoing rules and embracing a free-flowing technique, I allow each composition to reveal itself organically and expressively.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00ad\u2014Tammy Blais<\/strong> \u201903<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m looking to translate the freedom I feel in the studio into an experience that brings the viewer happiness,\u201d Blais says and laughs. In conversation, laughter is Blais\u2019s preferred form of punctuation.

On this unseasonably warm spring day, Blais, who majored in textiles, fashion merchandising, and design at äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾, is dressed, head to toe, in black, a signature look for the artist. Very minimalist. She grins at the observation. The discrepancy between art and artist is not lost on her. But to Blais, color is not limited to what can be seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a certain elegance to neutrals, don\u2019t you think?\u201d she says. \u201cBut personalities can be the color.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014Marybeth Reilly-McGreen<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

See Blais’ work at tammyblaisart.com<\/strong><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

PHOTOS: Courtesy Tammy Blais<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Artist Tammy Blais \u201903 embraces color and broad strokes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":19461,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[363],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-summer-2026","architecture-close-up","architecture-network"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19379"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19468,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19379\/revisions\/19468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19461"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}