Tanta Pennington

Hi! I am Tanta and I have the good fortune to be an artist living and painting in Victoria, BC.

Currently, I am enrolled in the diploma program at  the Vancouver Island School of Art and will graduate in 2011. As far as I can figure out, we are only given a few chances in our lives to do as we wish; so I have chosen to spend the rest of my life being an artist

The type of Art I produce is mostly figurative and  expressively  abstracted. The mediums I utilize   to create these forms are drawing, watercolours, acrylics, and intaglio prints. While I might begin a painting with a preconceived idea sometimes from my imagination and at other times from my drawings, it is usually short lived; as I become involved in a painting, whether it is a crowd in the middle of the canvas or a singular person on the edge, I realize the piece has a story to tell. The brush strokes are part of me. I am spread within each layer of paint as I carve, scrape, and pull figures from the negative space with scraffito lines and neutral gray colours wedged  between bright oranges, blues and yellows. I feel exposed and vulnerable as if it is my skin that is covering  the canvas. California artist David Park once stated: “Art ought to be a troubling thing.” I couldn’t agree more.

 I am not sure where my people came from or why. They are my guardian angels; the patron saints of my canvas. Quite often I feel as if I am another layer sandwiched  in between and they are really creating me. At times people  find my work unusual and unsettling. They have questions and are uncertain about my slightly bizarre and grotesque forms. Because of that spark of curiosity I know that my  story is just the beginning of numerous chapters. Already, I feel that I’ve written many versions with my brushes and I will always narrate these stories from my soul.