Name: Tanya Beyer
Location/Studio: Virginia area
Medium: mixed media watercolors
- Why Do You Make This Type of Art?
I have never forgotten the fortunes of a happy childhood. High points included scenes and plant and animal sightings belonging to a particular time and place. I feel compelled to recreate such sightings today as artwork, portraying the subject close to the way I saw it.
- What Does Your Artwork Represent?
It seems that since before I can say now I was aware, I’ve been enchanted by small plants and wild creatures. My father showed them to me up close when I was barely even a toddler. I grew up in great emotional security in the countryside, part of that in Ontario on Lake Superior’s north shore. I have never gotten over the sense of the transitory but sacred aspect of wild living creatures, plant or animal, as though they are figureheads of vast natural creation all around us.
- What Inspires You?
I think my art is both the best, broadest and most exact rendering of sights and visions that bring me the best, most sudden and startling joy.
- How Do You Make It?
I’m using pretty much clean and portable media, watercolor, pencil and fine-line ink on paper; these are easy to carry with me outdoors. They are fairly inexpensive and don’t require a suite of solvents or oils to clean up or alter the composition of my paint, etc.
- What Does Your Art Mean to You?
A completed artwork means, to me, a completed experience of the sublime.