Tanya Painting

I am predominantly figurative artist, exploring female form via solitary sexuality and nudity through expressionistic imagery, highlighting spiritual and sometimes religious or mythological themes. My preoccupation for dramatic contrast comes from fascination over Italian Renaissance and Caravaggio's use of use of chiaroscuro and his rich dark palette. I like using live models and working quickly and directly onto canvas. Intending to relate to the viewer on the most intimate level, my works are always faceless, expressing that way universality of torment through human emotion. Exploring the human body through suffering, sacrifice, isolation and emptiness is autobiographical for me: based on a life in exile, and a homeland torn apart in a civil war. In my recent works, there is tendency towards abstract development by growing out of narrative, investigating 'painting within painting', freeing and enlarging further parts of figurative artworks by using variety of mediums to build texture including sand, plaster and resin.