Just as Tamar Bordwin readied materials to complete her senior year final project on traditional apron weaving, the COVID-19 pandemic sent her from Kathmandu, Nepal back home to Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, where she’d finish her last semester of college. Her teacher told her class that because of the sudden need to return from their abroad program, their final assignment could be any sort of reflection on their time away. Taken out of one environment and placed into a drastically different one, she took on the challenge of honoring her new space while engaging with it in her own way. Unable to explore her apron weaving idea, she shifted gears to a medium she hadn’t paid attention to since high school: oil paint. Over the final weeks of spring, Bordwin brought to life an image of herself holding a Himalayan goose against a Buddhist-inspired backdrop on canvas. She hadn’t chosen painting as a major in college out of an awareness that the artist life isn’t the most stable. After “Next Year” had been completed, however, she knew she’d be denying not just a natural talent of hers, but a practice she deeply loved, if she didn’t give this artistic pursuit a chance.
“I got back in touch with the painter in me. I realized I still love this, and I can still do it.”
Bordwin moved to New York the fall after graduating to surround herself with creatives and friends. She landed a part-time studio assistant position and a server job in Brooklyn Heights. She’d spent the summer working at a wine bar in her hometown and found comfort amidst the maturity, speed and comradery of the food and beverage industry. Serving allowed for long hours to spend painting or exploring the city.
“Restaurants feel like a very adult space; people don't know how old you are, they might think you're cute, they might want to flirt with you, and that's completely acceptable, that's almost expected. I liked that environment combined with coworkers and the restaurant watching over you to make you feel safe and make you feel like this is part of it, but if it got serious, then you’d be taken care of.”
While New York City gave Bordwin a social life, a means of financially supporting herself, and a proximity to art, it also gave her what it gives most of its residents: an apartment you could stand in the center of and touch each wall without moving your feet. Oil painting is a messy medium, and sitting at her small desk in her small room, Bordwin felt constricted.
“I moved here for the creativity, but the thing I do requires space, and I didn’t have that, and I didn't trust myself to work in my own space.”
After spending a year in New York waiting tables, painting wooden blocks at her desk to keep up her practice, and saving every penny earned, Bordwin required a change. In efforts to learn more about self-sustaining communities and to simply spread out her arms, she set out to spend a year traveling and working. She wanted to learn about agricultural environments and their functionality strategies, as she’s always hoped to one day open a farm and art collective.
“I tried to gather information about what it looks like to live different, alternative forms of agricultural practices. That's something that feeds my soul. I want to know how I can create something I love to do and the lifestyle that I want for myself and that helps other people.”
Hopping from a teaching farm in New Hampshire, back to New York to make more money, down to Ecuador to live with and support a family in an indigenous community, out to a hobby farm in California with a screen printing studio, and finally up to an artist residency in Vermont, Bordwin took notes on the ways groups of people can operate an environment they benefit from and also call home.Time away from New York showed her the different ways a collective style living arrangement can look, but throughout her travels she found herself missing her social and artistic circles. As she learned about other communities, she began missing her own. She returned determined to find a way to paint freely in the crowded city.
“I have these two parts of me. One of them is drawn towards rural and agricultural spaces. I’ve helped with the slaughtering and butchering of several animals, and that's been a powerful experience, and really resonated deeply with me. But being a social person in a city also feels like me . . . Being here in New York, it just is who I am. It is totally central in my life.”
In September of 2024, Bordwin started working as a barista at Corto Café, a sleek Italian coffee shop across the street from her apartment. Over the past nine months, the café has reshaped the painter’s relationship with the city.
“I have these two parts of me. One of them is drawn towards rural and agricultural spaces. I’ve helped with the slaughtering and butchering of several animals, and that's been a powerful experience, and really resonated deeply with me. But being a social person in a city also feels like me . . . Being here in New York, it just is who I am. It is totally central in my life.”
New York, it
just is who I am.
central in my life.”
In September of 2024, Bordwin started working as a barista at Corto Café, a sleek Italian coffee shop across the street from her apartment. Over the past nine months, the café has reshaped the painter’s relationship with the city.
“Working there just feels like my friends and I hanging out and making coffee. And a lot of those friends are also regulars who have become my immediate community. Every single time I step outside my apartment, I see someone I know. It's amazing. It makes the city feel so much smaller.”
One of the regulars at Bordwin’s café is a bartender at a place down the street. Bordwin has known him since she started working and visits his bar with friends often. During a conversation the two were having in April of this year, she learned that he was a painter just like herself, and that he had a studio space he enjoyed working out of.
“I was like, ‘I need a studio.’ He goes, ‘My landlord's amazing. Here's his number.’ It was like a gift from the cafe.”
This bartender-barista friendship had, in the span of a single conversation, solved Bordwin’s years-long issue of painting space. She contacted the studio immediately and now, finally, has room to play.
“I can do anything. I can reopen my brain to creativity and ideas. I have the space to finally be taking work and reaching out to anyone who's ever said they want a painting, and tell them, ‘I am ready for you.’”
After years of figuring out how to fit every part of herself and her passions in New York City, pieces have begun to fall into place. With an art studio down the road, a barista job across the street, and friends in every space, Bordwin now sees the city in a different light. She’s worked to allow her needs and the city’s characteristics to grow not against one another but alongside each other. She finds peace in natural, agriculture environments, but has learned to appreciate the limited amount of nature New York has poking out of its streets and sidewalks.
“Sometimes I observe the city in the same way that I would observe nature on a walk. I'm seeing gorgeous people smiling on a sunny day, or I'm biking around, and I just think ‘Look at all these amazing things passing by.’ There is so much to see and appreciate here once you get past the idea that it's an ugly cement box. The beauty of things growing here in this harsh environment is inspirational.”
After years of honoring her priorities and adjusting her environments to reflect them, Bordwin is learning how to bring every aspect of life that is important to her into her relationship with New York. Recently, she’s finished a project where she collected sticks from Prospect Park, arranged them in a frame structure, then stretched a canvas across them to imitate traditional leather making techniques. On the canvas, she painted a laundry clothesline with shirts suspended against a blue sky background, inspired by her walking by someone’s laundry day in Ridgewood and snapping a photo. The project shows her ability to take what her environment has to offer, make it into something she can use to express herself, and create a collective homage to both her values and her surroundings.
“I look at that painting and think, ‘This is me. That painting is me, and this is the beauty I see in these two different places.’ And they can be in the same person or be in the same painting.”
Bordwin looks to the future with an optimistic, energetic spirit. She is beginning an assistant job at a collective printing press studio in the fall, continuing to shape her studio into a welcoming space she and her friends can move freely around, and excitedly accepting commissions. Her oil painting style of creating realistic-looking people against less realistic backgrounds give her portraits a unique look, one that reflects her relationship with both people and nature.
“You can tell so much about a painter from what they choose to render realistically and what they choose to stylize. I love painting skin and capturing faces and light on people. I also have this love of nature and feel so moved by its whimsy and playfulness that I want to capture that essence instead of trying to paint leaf by leaf. I find it gives emphasis, care and intentionality to all of it.”
Bordwin eventually sees a collective art and farming lifestyle as a future home. For now, however, she’s defined her life in New York by finding beauty in surroundings, connecting with friends and strangers alike, and finally, painting. ∎
