Tatiana Switzer

Tatiana Switzer creates with oils to paint raw, figurative compositions within luminal, ambiguous landscapes and fanciful stories. She draws from her own identities and experiences as Polish and Black, centering and deconstructing "self" in ways informed by relational awareness, distinct and bustling communities, Soviet-era ideology constraints, and prescribed expectations regarding “right” and “good.”

Heightened chromatic sensibility structures her work. Most notable is the recurrent choice of poppy red to ground figures into/as scenographic logic. These are often figures that transcend narrative and abstraction, performance and ritual -- emerging, without an identity ultimatum, as valiant and fresh. As both witness and co-creator, Switzer engages the impermanence and impulse of lived experience to breathe life and curiosity into tales, legacies, and transformation.

She earned a BFA and received the prestigious Florence Leif award from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2025.