Tina Tammaro’s artwork will be on display at Music Hall’s Founders Room throughout the month of June for Cincinnati Opera’s 2025 Summer Festival. Get to know this local artist and the inspiration that fuels her creativity.
For Tina Tammaro, painting is less like a blueprint and more like a journey—one filled with uncertainty, emotion, and evolving perspective. Much like opera, her work unfolds in layers.
Tina Tammaro
“I don’t have any idea what the painting is going to look like,” she says. Often working on several canvases at once, her studio pulses with half-formed narratives, evolving characters, and the tension of something unfinished. Her creative process is intuitive, guided by feeling rather than structure.
This sense of storytelling lies at the heart of her work. “Some pieces take three months, others a year,” she explains. “What’s important is the emotional resonance—something very personal that you can attach yourself to, but also something universal.” She wants viewers to see themselves in the work while sensing something larger at play. She likens her painting to arias rich in emotion, expression, and layered in meaning.
“They’re dramatic, like opera!” she says. “All my work is about power—who has it, who loses it, and how people use it.” This theme is a constant in opera, and constantly shows up in everyday life.
Tammaro’s inspiration comes from real life experiences—conversations, beliefs, and what is happening around us every day. She is endlessly inspired and incredibly intuitive. Just like opera, her work asks to be seen more than once. Each time reveal something new.
“What’s wonderful about paintings,” she says, “is that you can see the whole story all at once.” Unlike opera, which unfolds moment by moment, visual art reveals its emotional arc instantly. Just like the dense twists and tangles of some operas, art is filled with deeper meanings beyond the colors and designs you see at first glance.
Tammaro’s artistic sensibility was shaped early on by a job at the Whitney Museum of Art in her twenties. Watching children interact with artwork left a lasting impression. She shared how incredible it was to witness children give their raw feedback to the art they saw. It truly showed her how powerful art can be.
As exemplified in Tammaro’s work, each canvas is a stage, and they echo the themes of opera: love, betrayal, ambition, and justice. Through bold choices and perspective, her paintings demand attention—and invite introspection. Her paintings don’t ask to be seen; they demand to be felt.