Born in Saskatchewan and raised in the prairies, Tanya has been deeply influenced by the elements of nature, family and Christian beliefs. In the early 1990’s she began her journey as an artist to become a still-life painter working primarily in watercolours. As long as she can remember she has been drawn to the still life paintings of Old Masters, and says “they speak to me on a deeply emotional level”. Her inspiration originates from seeing nuances of light and shadow. In her work, she strives to capture the light through dramatization of a subject and show how light alone can transfigure an ordinary still-life subject, at a specific moment, into something magnificent or tender.

After almost a ten year interval from painting to raise her young family with her husband and working full time in the legal profession, she has returned to her passion. This time, she began to work with acrylics and oils, and as well began painting en plein air. She asserts that “The joy of en plein air painting never diminishes, but increases. It’s about being centered, being present, and receptive to the beauty of nature and how it can never be improved upon. I can’t match the Creator’s exquisite landscape, design, light or colors but I am delighting in learning what it takes to be a “plein air” painter. There’s a level of concentration that can’t be matched in the studio. For me, that practiced concentration begets seeing color, value, line and edges in a way I have never seen in the studio. You learn how to see light, and gradually you learn to paint the light.”

She is an artist striving to work in a classical way with traditional media and her aspiration after her hiatus remains constant. She never tires of the hushed silence of a still life and how the solidity of an object can be connected into a set up with an adjoining object of fragility. “I get lost in the choices and the beauty of balancing still life arrangements. When I have completed the arrangement of a set-up, I sit back and take a long moment just to savour its stillness.” That’s what she wants her viewer to experience. “See the light, to hear the stillness”, she says. Her first solo show is titled “Light in Life – Value Changes” because when she paints she says “I connect with the Spirit within me, the Light in my life, and that’s when I know how truly blessed I am to have this passion, and what a gift it is to have this privilege, of saying thank you with my brush”.

Biography – Tanya F. Bone, AFCA, NWWS