Tanya Tull is a Los Angeles-based artist who studied at the Claremont Colleges in the 1960s (BFA, Scripps College, 1964). There, she studied with Phil Dike, Jean Goodwin Ames, Paul Darrow, and Douglas McClellan - including two years of graduate school classes within her studio art major. In the 1970s, married and raising three children, her life trajectory took a sharp turn after reading an article in the LA Times about children living in Skid Row hotels. Having worked previously in the area as an L.A. County social worker for three years, learning of children living in Skid Row disturbed her immensely. In 1980, she incorporated a nonprofit organization, Para Los Niños (For the Children) and opened its doors on Skid Row a year later. Hoping to return to her art within a short time, she also subleased a large art studio nearby and began painting there on weekends.

Within a few short years, however, homeless people began living on the streets and soon homeless families were seeking help at Para Los Niños each day. Unable to turn away, Tanya began providing emergency shelter at nearby hotels with FEMA vouchers. In 1983 co-founded LA Family Housing — and then founded A Community of Friends in 1988 (housing for the homeless mentally ill) and Beyond Shelter a few months later (innovating the “housing first” approach for families with children). Federal research grants promoted her innovations both nationally and internationally, as Tanya became an expert on ending family homelessness. She then devoted the next three decades to promoting “housing first for families” both nationally and internationally.

Tanya firmly believes that it was her innate ability to “color outside the lines” that enabled her to apply her creative skills to address challenging social problems. She compares it to an abstract painting that isn’t resolved but has the elements to envision in a new way. Today, she is painting prolifically full-time. Her work is replete with riotous color, shapes that keep changing as each piece evolves – and with layers of underpainting often showing through.

ARTIST STATEMENT

After 35+ years as a social innovator and committed social activist, in 2020 I returned full-time to making art. Years ago, I painted large abstract canvases. That art has been slow to come back. What I have experienced instead is a steady movement forward, grateful that I have time at this point in my life to paint again.

I immerse myself daily in riotous color and changing shapes, as I regain skills I thought lost and remember the use of color, space, and composition. When I paint, I enter a world in which nothing else exists except the process… each moment is a private conversation between me and the canvas – with shapes and colors emerging that often surprise me. 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.

Because I did not lift a brush for decades while away from my art, squeezing paint to palate, putting brush to paint and then paint to canvas, has been replete with the full range of emotions. No, it doesn’t come back immediately – and it is absolutely NOT like riding a bike!

Many of my paintings represent to me the primordial essence and timelessness of the natural environment around us that continues to exist in spite of us. Seemingly quiet and peaceful from afar, a closer look reveals the “wild things” hidden within. Simultaneously, they represent the integration of both joy and sorrow — with elements of every human emotion and experience layered in.