Charlotte Tarantola is a contemporary painter based in Portland, Oregon. Working primarily in oil on wood panels, she creates luminous landscapes that exist somewhere between memory and imagination. Inspired by personal photography, collaborative photographic imagery, travel, architecture, and the atmospheric qualities of light and water, her paintings blur the boundary between observed places and invented worlds. Rather than depicting specific destinations, Tarantola creates spaces that evoke beauty, contemplation, and fantastical escapes.

Before dedicating herself to painting full-time in 2015, Tarantola spent two decades as founder and creative director of an internationally distributed fashion label, where she developed a visual language rooted in color and pattern. That same sensibility now informs her studio practice, creating immersive paintings that invite viewers into places that feel both familiar and dreamlike.

Her work has been exhibited in California, New York, Oregon, and Florida, and is held in private collections throughout the United States and Europe.

"My work explores the emotional architecture of light — how color, water, and atmosphere shape our internal sense of place, escape, and joy.

Using oil paint, I reinterpret imagery drawn from my own photography and collaborations with photographers. I am less interested in documentation than in transformation. The landscapes I paint are intentionally heightened — colors intensified, reflections deepened, light stretched toward neon — in order to amplify the feeling of being there.Water is central to my practice. Pools, shorelines, and open horizons act as portals: places where time stops and the viewer can momentarily step outside. Swaying palms, umbrellas, swimming pools, and iconic hotels become symbols of leisure, aspiration, and memory — a collective California dream.

While rooted in real locations, my paintings focus on fantasy and escapism. They are invitations to pause, and inhabit a restorative state of mind.

From my vintage 1956 pink and gold trailer studio in Portland, I construct these luminous spaces and skies as a counterbalance to reality — personal sanctuaries rendered in oil."