“I’m chasing the moment a feeling becomes still enough to see.”
Noell Tarpey is a contemporary abstract painter based in San Diego, California. Master painter for more than 33 years, she is working across oil, cold wax, acrylic, plaster, and paper. She builds each painting in successive layers —adding, scraping back, and rebuilding until a surface holds a single, settled emotion.
Her work lives in private collections and designed interiors across the United States. Every piece is original, signed, and made entirely by hand in her studio.
Every piece begins without a plan and ends when it holds an emotion still. Texture is memory, color is feeling, and the layers are time. I want the work to change a room — and to keep revealing itself over years of living with it.
Layers of plaster, marble dust, and sand build the surface — the physical body of the painting.
Oil and pigment are worked in successive passes, adding and scraping back until the palette feels inevitable.
Every commission begins with a conversation about feeling, palette, and scale.
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Contemporary abstract painting. Made by hand in the studio.