I studied visual communication at Vega School, JHB graduating in 2008. I made art, took pictures, fell in love, got heartbroken, blossomed, withered, changed.
It was a magical time in my life that I so revere but part of me started to seek a hiding place.
I went on to sell part of my soul in the Ad industry for almost 11 years (A time I do not revere! Haha).
But it was valuable & necessary and I could find a place for myself behind the safe title, 'Suit' because 'Artist' had become too foreign to me now, too gutsy, too naked.
Covid hit and I was retrenched from a well paying marketing manager job during hard lockdown. I could never have imagined how much this literal ordeal would ultimately set me free. I also couldn't have used the next 2.5 years to explore and rediscover my creativity and gifts if not for my Mother.
I found myself in fashion - working as a stylist, and running a successful sustainable clothing brand, Dear Prudence Vintage. I loved that business. It was so fundamental in me finding myself, my space, my voice, my joy. 4 pivotal years. Dear Prudence, while beautiful to look at, had always been highly curated - which I didn't realise at the time was really motivated by fear.
"There I was growing, out loud, and for so many people to witness. IT felt so vulnerable, and at times messy & other TIMES joyful. I was trying to control the narrative - my narrative & my hypothetical fist was clenched ever so tightly."
The best way I can describe how k e e p s a k e & photography feels, how making art feels, and what it has gifted me is; the courage to open my hand, to take up space, to relinquish, to be seen in all ways.
Even the ones I can't control, and no longer wish to.
Truly the catalyst for all of the bravery I need to do this, to follow my hearts path, to take a leap of faith, to open my fist, was the miraculous birth of our dear daughter, Sadie, and the safest place I've ever known in her father, my partner, Timothy.
Yet once again it was the maternal thread that has run through my life the way a river does - it was my Mother, Mandy who sat before me while I rattled off another course I was going to pursue, another business idea I had, another way to keep controlling the narrative, a new way to hide; to which she simply replied because she has always seen me, "Buy yourself a camera, Tam"
So I did.
And I found my joy.
And my self.
AND I WISH TO SHARE THAT GIFT WITH YOU.
