Dynamism, color and an eye for experimentation have earned Tallahassee, Florida’s Paul Tamanian a larger-than-life reputation. This summer’s Vail International Gallery show provides an updated look at his truly multidisciplinary work.
Taking an artistic and personal approach that’s somewhere between Jackson Pollock and Charles Bukowski, Tamanian’s creative career only emerged in his 30s, after a degree in interior design and work in retail. Born in upstate New York, Tamanian’s family moved to Clearwater, and when he landed in Tallahassee to attend Florida State, he decided to stick around.
“Things really started when I quit my job – I managed a sporting goods store – and I moved out to the woods, on a lake, and built my house myself,” he says. Just seven miles from the state capitol buildings, he said he had no cell service or internet until the Covid era, helping to create an artistic isolation that’s helped feed his wonderfully experimental style.
Tamanian’s early works were in ceramics, unglazed pieces that used a slab technique to render pieces that included traditional forms such as vases, but slowly evolved into much more abstract, horn-shaped sculptural pieces. Later, he moved into metalwork and gradually two-dimensional paintings, with the biggest emphasis placed on an endless variety of surfaces and surface colors.
“I really just love to make and create stuff, and every piece is different. I love the experimentation, the what-if factor. I even like to see what the paints do when it’s 19 degrees out.” Paul Tamanian, artist
“I did a lot with nickel plates that were modified through firing and then really hard sanding, so hard that my arms wore out, but the results were really radical,” he says.
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“Intergalactic,” by Paul Tamanian, mixed media on aluminum, 45″x90″x2.25″. Meet the artist at Vail International Gallery July 3-7, 2026. Paul Tamanian
His first stuff went full Pollock, as he spent time outdoors at his rustic studio and used a garden hose to mix up the inks, paints and random colors on watercolor or illustration boards, and later aluminum surfaces. Just for fun, Tamanian says he’s been using similar techniques now to do custom paintwork on classic midcentury William Plunkett sofas.
“I really just love to make and create stuff, and every piece is different,” he says. “I love the experimentation, the what-if factor. I even like to see what the paints do when it’s 19 degrees out.”
Tamanian’s art career accelerated when he landed his first regional gallery showings with Fay Gold in Atlanta, where his pieces were displayed along with Basquiat and his artistic mentors, glass artists William Morris and Richard Jolley – a spot he negotiated with some of his trademark tenacity.
He’s subsequently become a national name with a broad range of works spanning clay, three-dimensional metal pieces, large-format paintings and even the custom-painted surfboards that will be seen in Vail.
“Surfboards are beautiful, sexy forms, though nearly everybody else illustrates them with decals,” he says. “I’ve got a whole crew of guys I work with, people who used to surf, and we do both vintage boards or custom-made stuff. I’ve got a 72-year-old guy who does Von Dutch-styled pinstriping. I’m basically the teenager of the group.”
“Mulberry Dreams,” by Paul Tamanian, mixed media on aluminum, 91.25″x48″x2.25″. Meet the artist at Vail International Gallery July 3-7, 2026. Paul Tamanian
Earlier this spring, Tamanian was still figuring out what else to bring to Vail, including wall sculptures and pedestal pieces, some as large as nine feet tall, as well as a few of his new paintings, done in a range of palettes.
Vail International Gallery co-owner Patrick Cassidy – himself a Tallahassee native – says Tamanian has been on his radar for a quarter century, and was interested in representing his mixture of contemporary/abstract work.
“Wandering through Santa Fe 25 years ago, I first came across Paul’s art in a contemporary gallery on Canyon Road and remembered really liking the energy of his work,” he says. “Last year, when I was looking for a contemporary abstract artist we could represent in Vail, I looked him up and was surprised to discover he lives in my hometown. He is a unique individual, with an intensity and personal energy that comes through in the kinetics and gestures in his art. Colorful, vivid, sometimes serene and contemplative, sometimes bursting with untamed energy, his optimism and zest for life is perfectly expressed in his paintings.”