Check Out Mira Gerard’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Mira Gerard.

Mira, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin? 
I have been an artist all my life. My parents were both artists, and I always had access to a big studio and materials. As a teenager, I was more drawn to theatre, but I circled back around to painting, and I became serious about it in college at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. After earning my BFA in painting and drawing, I took a few years off to travel, make art, start and end a small business, and teach art at a k-12 private school in an Ashram in New Hampshire, where I had spent several years of my childhood. After that, I moved to Florida to help my dad with his gallery. He ran several galleries, all self-promoting, throughout his life. I eventually got my MFA in painting from UGA in Athens, Georgia. After that, I got a job as an art professor at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. I’ve been teaching there full-time since 2001. 

The big shift happened in my life during the pandemic. My mother had just died the year before, and then my father died in 2020. He was living and working in his gallery in Asheville, and he let me a massive amount of his work, his business, his lease, and a full staff. I kept his gallery open until mid-2022, selling much of his remaining paintings. On a whim, before he passed away, I told Papa that I was thinking about running a gallery there one day. He gave me his blessing and a ton of support. I was dubious about it, but the dream became more and more of a vision, and I went for it and rebranded my own gallery: Tyger Tyger Gallery. Working closely with a wonderful staff, I was able to curate a grand opening show with a selection of artists – and the gallery was born. 

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It has been incredibly rewarding and challenging. The biggest struggle, aside from finding the time to do it all, is always a financial one. Getting established within the community is huge, and it takes time. I am excited to say that the gallery is becoming more and more recognized and supported. We’ve sold work to collectors around the world, and we are expanding past primarily painting and drawing to sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, jewelry, photography, and even a fine craft gallery within the expansive, gorgeous space. 

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do?
As an artist, art professor, art curator, and gallery owner with a childhood spent with artists who made a living at their art, I have had an incredible range of experiences that I bring to my work. 

My paintings come from a metaphysical space through which my love of landscape, light, and relationships between living beings – plants, animals, and humans – within landscape and abstract spaces. Working with intuition, memory, and emotion, I conjure worlds that bridge my psyche with the gorgeousness of the natural world around me. I am heavily inspired by the Symbolist painters, visionary landscape, the supernatural, dream analysis, poetry, and love. 

As a professor, I always strive to work with students by listening to their interests and fascinations. I have many tools and techniques I can give, but I see my teaching as more of a conversation with students and space that I hold for them and bearing witness to their unfolding. 

As a curator and gallerist, I seek out visionary, luminous, magical work that contains multitudes even through economy of form. Landscape painting, when it contains a level of sinking into the soul of a space – whether that space is invented, observed, remembered, or conjured- has been a major curatorial organizing principle for me. As a figure painter for over 3 decades, I am always interested in how we tell our stories through the figure. To that end, I strive to look past conventional presentations and expected poses and have found some stunning artists whose work takes the figure towards introspection, embodiment, and presence rather than performativity, decoration, or objectification. 

Before we go, is there anything else you can share with us?
As I’ve grown older, I have found that my propensity for wonder keeps growing, and my appreciation for beauty and bliss in the little, everyday pieces of my life continues to deepen. I feel grateful for it all, especially now that I have lost my parents and can comprehend the preciousness of every single minute. I hope that art lovers and people who may not be sure how they feel about art can find a way to enrich their lives by opening their minds and hearts to experiencing, making, collecting, and living with art, and the people who take the risk to do something that society often marginalizes as being frivolous or indulgent. 

It is my belief that the arts keep the world from complete annihilation. Art reminds us who we are and that we are all in this together, and it gives a voice to things that feel impossible to express. It is an act of courage to forge a life in the arts. 

Contact Info:

• Website: tygertygergallery.com
• Instagram: @tygertygergallery
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/tygertygergallery

Image Credits
Mira Gerard