Cayetana “Tani” Conrad
T
ani Conrad remembers staring at the design on a milk carton when she was about seven years old.
“I realized that someone got paid to color,” she said. “That seemed like a great job to me. At about age twelve or thirteen, I became aware that some of my friends were good at something – like soccer or tennis. Most impressive was one friend who could play “House of the Rising Sun” on the guitar. So that summer, I asked my father to teach me how to paint with oils.” Conrad’s father was well-known author, artist, raconteur, and longtime Carpinteria resident Barnaby Conrad, a man of many talents who mastered trompe l’oeil with his paintbrush. Tani’s father taught her how to paint initially. Her brother and two of her grown children are also painters and/or illustrators. “So my family has influenced my art,” she explained. Born in San Francisco, Tani spent “many vacations and happy summers rafting at Rincon Beach” as a young girl near the house her father Barnaby and stepmother Mary built at Rincon Point in 1969. Conrad moved to New York City where she studied theatre design at NYU and lived on the East Coast most of her adult life, yet she used what she
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