Tinka and Lewis Tarver discuss their art collection with the Art Center’s exhibition committee at their home in Alamo Heights. 2016
A Message from Luis Purón, Executive Director
Esteemed Artists, Members of the Art Association:
My column this month is written with you in mind.
A week ago, after a ten year battle with Alzheimer’s, a dear friend passed. I credit her and her husband for mentoring me in the Texas art sphere. Tinka Tarver and her husband Lewis have been at the core of San Antonio’s contemporary art scene for decades. A tour de force, the power couple have championed artists, creatives and art institutions in the Alamo City for as long as anyone can remember.
Tinka lived an unconventional life. She was a maverick in the world of abstract art, a world that has limited access for women’s voices. Tinka was an intellectual student of Carl Jung’s work, a writer, a fashion illustrator, a painter, a dancer, a fabric artist, a sculptor, and a metal smith. Her pursuits made her one of the most fascinating people to have a conversation with. Her papers are chronicled at the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution. As an artist, Tinka produced a celebrated body of work as diverse as her interests. Her career as an artist went beyond the beyond.
The publication Opening Out documents Tinka’s 1989 solo exhibition at the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio. We met a year later. The title of her exhibit references a poem by Victorian era writer, Robert Browning:
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, whate’er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness; and around,
Wall upon wall, the gross flesh hems it in,
This perfect, clear perception—which is truth.
A baffling and perverting carnal mesh
Binds it, and makes all error: and, to know,
Rather consists in opening out a way
Whence the imprisoned splendour may escape,
Than in effecting entry for a light
Supposed to be without.
She wrote journals in order to explore a desire to know and understand herself. “They are conversations with my soul,” she wrote.
Besides a striking presence, a lovely smile and an infectious laugh, one of the things I’ll remember most about her is her self-awareness. She mastered the art of looking inward, instead of searching for answers in the conscious or the material world.
If you are a nascent artist or one that has already emerged, I encourage you to take a page from Tinka Tarver’s book, and let your “imprisoned splendor escape.” Because you alone must become yourself, but you cannot become yourself alone. Though you are ultimately responsible for creating your own artistic sovereignty, you’ll need support along the way.
May she Rest in Peace.
Luis Purón
Executive Director