JENNIFER MYGATT TATUM

Jennifer Mygatt Tatum

Visual Artist

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Jennifer Mygatt Tatum is a Sonoma County-based visual artist whose work explores the

insight and perspective gained through time spent in nature. Through her art, she reveals

how nature’s textures and rhythms align us with our innate inner wisdom. Her practice is

best known for interpreting her Wandering Women motif through metal, paint, print, and

mosaic.

The Wandering Women motif transcends the specific representation of women and instead

becomes a lens through which to examine the world within and around the human

experience. Inspired by the forest and its quiet revelations, Jennifer selects materials that

best express the seeds of ideas awakened during her walks in nature.

In June 2023, she undertook a self-driven 30-day artist retreat by the sea in Denmark.

Immersed in solitude, surrounded by neighboring forests and the rhythmic presence of the

sea, she created Essence of Place, a body of work that marked a new chapter in her creative

journey. This series consists of five large water-soluble graphite pieces, capturing a dance

between discipline and gesture. Light, time, and the subtleties of place became central to

this reflective work, fueling her continued artistic exploration.

Upon returning from Denmark, Jennifer revisited the familiar trails of Tahoe’s burnt

landscapes, where the Caldor Fire had transformed lush forests into haunting spires of

charcoal. Walking these trails, she collected charred bark and, in an act of renewal,

transformed it into paint. With this material, she recreated the forests as they once stood—

a poignant gesture that honored both nature’s resilience and its cycles of destruction and

rebirth. Each painting, rendered from the ashes, tells a story of survival, transformation, and

hope.

Inspired by the patterns of the charred bark, Jennifer began exploring Mokulito

printmaking—a form of lithography using wood. Birch ply panels became her canvases as

she visually interpreted the intricate textures and stoic beauty of the burnt forest. Through

this process, she found a profound reminder that beauty can emerge from destruction,

shaping her vision and guiding her hands.

Jennifer’s multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, printmaking, painting, mosaics, and

large-scale public art. Her materials—wood, wire, clay, mosaic, glass, paint, and ink—are

selected intuitively, one medium informing and inspiring the next. This fluidity allows her

creative process to evolve organically, bridging the gaps between mediums and ideas, much

like nature itself.Through her work, Jennifer Mygatt Tatum invites viewers to pause, reflect, and reconnect

with the timeless dialogues between the self and the natural world.