About Tanya Tull

Tanya Tull is a Los Angeles-based artist who studied at the Claremont Colleges in the 1960s with Phil Dike, Jean Goodwin Ames, Paul Darrow and Douglas McClellan, among others (BA in Art and Humanities, Scripps College, 1964). She continued painting after that, while also working and raising a family. Her life took a sharp turn in 1980, however, after reading an article in the LA Times about children living in Skid Row hotels. Within weeks she had incorporated a nonprofit organization, Para Los Niños (For the Children), intending to lead it for a year as a volunteer — and then return to painting. At the same time, the new arts community in Downtown LA had begun to take hold, as artists moved into studio lofts in converted warehouses. Tanya subleased a large art studio nearby and began painting on weekends — while working at Para Los Niños during the week. 

Based in LA’s Skid Row almost seven days a week, Tanya found herself with a “front row seat” as homeless people — including families with children — began appearing on the city streets. Unable to turn away, Tanya co-founded LA Family Housing in 1983 and founded both A Community of Friends and Beyond Shelter in 1988. She then worked over the next 25 years to promote systemic change on a national scale.

Today, Tanya is painting prolifically again fulltime. She is particularly proud of her artist son, Dani Tull (MFA Stanford), who shows both nationally and internationally and co-founded two art galleries, the Highland Park art gallery Odd Ark LA (2017-2023) and Cherkovski, based in Brooklyn, NY. Tanya’s uncle Herman Cherry (1909-1992) was an early abstract expressionist painter of the New York school.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I firmly believe that it was my ability to “color outside the lines” that enabled me to apply my creative skills to addressing challenging social problems. After a long and productive career, I returned to my art fulltime in 2020. Although I previously painted large abstract canvases, that art has been slow to return. Grateful that I have time at this point in my life to paint again, what I have experienced instead is a steady movement forward. No, it doesn’t come back immediately — and it is absolutely NOT like riding a bike!

Working primarily with oil on canvas, my work has evolved over the past few years into a language that communicates not only the primordial essence and timelessness of the natural world around us, but also the “wild things” hidden within. Organic forms emerge and evolve into fragments of landscape, verdant growth, or the human figure, without fully resolving into fixed imagery. I paint immersed in a dreamlike state of consciousness — as I intuitively explore the space between abstraction and recognition, between fantasy and reality, between what could be and what might actually exist in the harsh light of day.

Each canvas invites open interpretation through gesture, color, and layered movement. Infused with riotous color, shapes keep changing as each piece evolves and layers of underpainting are often showing through.. The viewer may see something that begins to take form, but in the end it is just beyond reach or has disappeared — or perhaps was never there at all. I am fully aware as I paint that each stroke is a new moment in time – some of which will remain memorialized on the canvas when I am done. At the same time, much will be painted over and simply gone. But to know that it was once there is often enough.