Collection: Tai Taeoalii

Artist Statement

“I have been drawing with a ballpoint pen since I was in grade school and music has always been the conduit for my expression, particularly by way of underground hip-hop. With the subconscious percolations of my life experiences, daily observations, a penchant for nostalgia and the pop culture of my youth, I’ve managed to utilize decades of self-taught techniques, cultivated with an aggressive work ethic, to create art that evokes an introspective experience. My creations spawn from an organic subconscious journey, manifested more by virtue of my own self-evaluation and less of propagating my ideology.” - Tai Taeoalii

Artist Biography

Tai Taeoalii is a U.S. born Samoan/Dutch artist that grew up in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, Utah during the 1980s. He’s stated that growing up bi-racial in that environment potentially led to his self-identification of an outcast. Afflicted with his cultural identity angst, he experienced some turbulent teenage years, but was fortunate to discover “the arts” were the remedy for expressing his frustrations. Through his artistic explorations he realized his auto-didactic ability, leading to experimentation with a variety of art-forms, including graffiti, tattoo, music & film and though he received numerous awards for his accomplishments in filmmaking, no medium has captured and retained his affections as strongly as drawing with a ballpoint pen, resulting in it being his central focus for most of his career as an artist.

Over the last two decades Tai has curated an audience of nearly 1 million followers combined on social media platforms and he’s sold hundreds, if not thousands, of his original artworks worldwide. For much of his career he travelled with his wife and two children, demonstrating the versatility of ballpoint pen through the trafficking of his artwork at galleries and art fairs all across the globe. For years Tai‘s artwork has maintained a prominent presence in cities like Chicago, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Detroit, Miami, Tucson, Minneapolis, and more.