"When Is Life Only B&W?"
Handcoloured B&W, Photographic Dyes, Digital Enhancement
Artist's Statement
Carmen Tome was born in Portugal and moved to the Okanagan with her family when she was 8 yrs old. Graduating from the SOSS in Oliver with Honors, she went on to study painting and drawing at Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in Vancouver and has been in the Greater Vancouver area ever since.
From humble beginnings in 1993 Tome started her photographic adventure and won awards almost immediately which catapulted her to professional status and within a year was winning major awards. Since then, she has been working out of Langley, BC, in Fine Art Images, Photographic Illustration, Artistic Portraiture and Concert and Portrait/Conceptual Photography for the music industry. Her freelance work takes her all over the Vancouver area, the lower mainland and beyond to national and international venues.
Recently she has joined forces with the non-profit organizations Opportunity International and Impact Nations to be able to benefit poverty striken areas of the world with her work.
Being an artist who likes to experiment she has come up with a diversity of photographic expression. Tome’s love of paintings imparts variations in techniques than can achieve renaissance, gothic and impressionist ambiences in her Fine Art photography and portraiture/conceptual images. Contrasting this is her photojournalistic work in photographing concerts, live births and her travels.
Now, returning to her painting roots, she is enjoying delving into acrylics, oils, pencils, mixed media, and mixed media photography. Something new emerges, especially in the painted portraits she creates by commission.
Carmen Tome has been named ‘Photographer of the Year’ three times provincially (PPABC) and ‘Commercial Photographer of the Year’ three times nationally (PPOC). As well, she has received multiple Best in Class Awards in ‘Fine Art’, ‘Photographic Illustration’, ‘Pictorial’, ‘Unclassified’,‘Industrial’, ‘Portrait of a Group’, ‘Portrait of a Man’, ‘Portrait of an Animal’, ‘Wedding Portrait’, ‘Restoration’, ‘Enhancement’. She has also received nineKodak Gallery Awards, Three Fuji Masterpiece Awards, a Nikon Award andmany Honourable Mentions. These, along with other art awards throughout the years, total more than forty.
Her work may be seen and bought through Quinta Ferreira Estate Winery, Mc Burney Junction, and private and corporate exhibitions ( joint efforts that benefit non-profit organizations).
Commissions / Projects
Carmen Tome has created quilted acrylic paintings, drawings, landscapes and commissioned painted portraits. For the last 14 years, also, she has been commissioned to create photographic portraits with an art emphasis for many clients, including commercial and private.