b. 1978, Adelaide, Australia
Lives and works in South Australia

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Tanya Wales is an abstract painter based in South Australia. The scale and tranquillity of Tanya’s works invite the audience to pause, to breathe, to feel. Spurning the use of familiar reference points to elicit an emotional response, the flowing forms and fields of colour provoke deeply personal and diverse interpretations. A confluence of techniques including pouring, transparent layers, fine brushwork and painterly marks are used to create an otherworldly narrative balanced by a sense of ambiguity and the illusion of simplicity. The multi-layered tension between colour and form provide a sublime energy in the work. Calling on varied techniques and processes, Tanya engages with a considered combination of elements across a concurrent series of works, building a complex narrative within each piece that references a point in time and a playful celebration of painting itself. Once completed, each work conveys the artist’s fascination with the fluid inevitability of life’s journey and with the paradox of knowing that despite all that has gone before all we ever really have is one perfect moment: the present.

Following professional education in Design Arts and Graphic Design, Wales began to develop her abstract painting practice. This included a period of training at the National Art School in 2007 and private tutoring between 2008 and 2014. Wales has exhibited extensively in Sydney and Melbourne through both solo and group exhibitions as well as at Art Fairs.

Moments Held, Exhibition Essay, James Kerr, 2024