Sometimes those who come from someplace else can show us our homes in a different way.
Nanda Thompson celebrates Tulsa with the vibrancy and color of her own home country, Brazil.
"I love Tulsa, made great friends, Tulsa's a very warm place," artist Thompson said.
Thompson shows that love with a modern abstract capture of her adopted home.
An ongoing colorful celebration of some of the city's most notable buildings.
"The Tulsa cityscapes, I really want to add color to it and I love the response that people are having to it," Thompson said. "And I think that also shows a sense of pride that Tulsans have of their city."
Growing up in Brazil, Nanda hoped to become an architect.
Her plans changed when she moved to Tulsa in 1993, a decade after she was first an exchange student at Inola High School.
"Art has always been part of my life," Thompson said. "When I was in high school here I studied art. I had a wonderful art teacher. And I continued studying it.
Today, she teaches Portuguese at TCC, where she's also renovated the long-unused gallery on the second floor of the downtown campus, and it's here that she curates all manner of young artists throughout the year.
Right now though, it's her own work on display.
Maybe you'll spot her in a corner, where she loves to watch visitor's reaction.
"And the emotion they had, they were taking selfies with my painting and I was just watching from a distance, it was wonderful, it's a great feeling for an artist to see that," Thompson said.
Thompson says she puts a 3-D surprise into each piece.
"I try to make my cityscapes not look like a photograph," Thompson said. "I want it to look like an art piece."
She hopes the rest of the world discovers what she has, and puts to canvas.
"Come to Tulsa, it's an awesome place to be," Thompson said.
Nanda's work is on exhibit through Nov. 30 at the downtown TCC location.
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