KRISTAL TOMSHANY BIOGRAPHY

Kristal Tomshany is a professional painter, musician, poet and art instructor. Born and raised in the Oklahoma Panhandle, she grew up surrounded by spacious fields of wheat and milo, an expansive sky, and the ever present wind. Her rural beginnings led to a more urban lifestyle as she moved down state to earn a BFA at Oklahoma State University, and later earned an MA and MFA at the University of Tulsa.
Kristal has lived in Tulsa since 1983, where she continues to paint and teach art to all ages. She has taught at Philbrook Museum of Art, Gilcrease Museum, The Art and Humanities Council of Tulsa, and Tulsa Community College, where she has served as an adjunct for over 20 years. She also gives creative workshops from her private studio on 11th street. Teaching provides a welcome balance to the solitary rigors of painting.

Her work has been exhibited at the following colleges in Oklahoma: Oklahoma State University, the University of Tulsa, the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, Rogers State University, and Tulsa Community College, and shown locally at the Hardesty Arts Center, Living Arts, Tulsa Artist Coalition, Performing Arts Center, Tulsa Mayfest Invitational Gallery, and M.A. Doran Gallery. She has also exhibited at the Baker Arts Center in Liberal, Kansas, and at the Wichita Art Museum in Wichita, Kansas.

Kristal has served as juror and curator for various art exhibitions and competitions in Oklahoma, including Oklahoma State University, Pryor Art Show, Tulsa Artist Coalition, Oklahoma Scholastic Arts, and the Tulsa Performing Arts Gallery.

Industrious by nature, Kristal spends her spare time playing and performing in the local band Finnegan's Awake, in which she plays whistle, flute, harmonica, cello, and drums. She is currently compiling a collection of essays and poems, Scattered Beads.


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