Tam is best known as a painter of modern landscapes and a longtime instructor at the Brooklyn Museum of Art School. Born in Hawaii, Tam received a degree in education from the University of Hawaii before moving to California to study at the California School of Fine Arts. He moved to New York in 1941 where he studied art history and philosophy at the New School for Social Research and Columbia University. He exhibited his paintings widely across the nation and was represented by the Downtown Gallery in New York. In 1948, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. He spent his summers on Monhegan Island in Maine. His works are in major museums across the United States including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland, Maine, and the Honolulu Museum of Art.
