Tahnee Lonsdale UK, b. 1982
Cartel, 2015
Acrylic on canvas
160 x 170 cm
63 x 66 7/8 in
63 x 66 7/8 in
© Tahnee Lonsdale
Further images
ARTIST BIO: Tahnee Lonsdale’s paintings represent the newest direction in semi-abstract painting. Whimsical figures, architecture, and other objects populate vibrant fields of color that suggest anything from domestic interiors to...
ARTIST BIO:
Tahnee Lonsdale’s paintings represent the newest direction in semi-abstract painting. Whimsical figures, architecture, and other objects populate vibrant fields of color that suggest anything from domestic interiors to wild landscapes.
At once both detailed and dreamy, Lonsdale’s work leaves just enough to the imagination. A narrative, often involving a journey of sorts, is clearly implied, though it is up to the viewer with the aid of Lonsdale’s colorful titles, to piece together all the elements of the story being told. According to the artist, this body of work embodies an eternal searching, whether that be literally or on a spiritual level.
Tahnee Lonsdale holds a BA from the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. Since graduating in 2007, she has been short-listed for both the Dazed and Confused Emerging Artist Award and “100 Painters of Tomorrow.”
Her work has been exhibited widely in her native Britain, as well as in the United States at venues such as the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, CA. Lonsdale currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE ARTWORK:
Tahnee Lonsdale’s paintings address contemporary issues that directly confront relationships, sex, and female empowerment. Through depiction of expressive, bending, shape-shifting nudes that represent the body as a locus of experience rather than a site observed, she draws on her personal journey that balances the ambiguous roles of a 21st-century mother, woman and artist. Concerned with the representation of women and feminism, the artist considers the complexities of the human condition and personal relationships in her work. Lonsdale gives a voice to her position: 'For me, being a woman is integral to my work,' Lonsdale says, 'it is my main resource.’
Colour is a material basis for the artist’s conceptual framework. Lonsdale paints a radiant scene of pneumatic anatomies with layered brushwork. The vivid strobe of yellow, so long a colour associated with the transgressive avant-garde, decadence, and beauty is a strong presence as the luminescence lifts the spirit and raises one’s vision.
Following in a tradition of women artists creating soft sculptures - such as Dorothea Tanning and Louise Bourgeois - there are allusions to an almost Surrealist sensibility. Lonsdale shares a mutual interest in the anthropomorphic forms that are stuffed and sewn. Her works unsettle the status quo for traditional ideas of sculpture and painting; responding as they do to the cold, pristine marble and bronze counterparts of art past, by offering soft, malleable forms that react to gravity in a more languid manner. These three-dimensional pieces are the genesis for whimsical images and narratives in her paintings. It is only after this first ritual of creation is completed that Lonsdale takes up the brush to begin work on her canvas.
Tahnee Lonsdale’s paintings represent the newest direction in semi-abstract painting. Whimsical figures, architecture, and other objects populate vibrant fields of color that suggest anything from domestic interiors to wild landscapes.
At once both detailed and dreamy, Lonsdale’s work leaves just enough to the imagination. A narrative, often involving a journey of sorts, is clearly implied, though it is up to the viewer with the aid of Lonsdale’s colorful titles, to piece together all the elements of the story being told. According to the artist, this body of work embodies an eternal searching, whether that be literally or on a spiritual level.
Tahnee Lonsdale holds a BA from the Byam Shaw School of Art in London. Since graduating in 2007, she has been short-listed for both the Dazed and Confused Emerging Artist Award and “100 Painters of Tomorrow.”
Her work has been exhibited widely in her native Britain, as well as in the United States at venues such as the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, CA. Lonsdale currently lives and works in Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE ARTWORK:
Tahnee Lonsdale’s paintings address contemporary issues that directly confront relationships, sex, and female empowerment. Through depiction of expressive, bending, shape-shifting nudes that represent the body as a locus of experience rather than a site observed, she draws on her personal journey that balances the ambiguous roles of a 21st-century mother, woman and artist. Concerned with the representation of women and feminism, the artist considers the complexities of the human condition and personal relationships in her work. Lonsdale gives a voice to her position: 'For me, being a woman is integral to my work,' Lonsdale says, 'it is my main resource.’
Colour is a material basis for the artist’s conceptual framework. Lonsdale paints a radiant scene of pneumatic anatomies with layered brushwork. The vivid strobe of yellow, so long a colour associated with the transgressive avant-garde, decadence, and beauty is a strong presence as the luminescence lifts the spirit and raises one’s vision.
Following in a tradition of women artists creating soft sculptures - such as Dorothea Tanning and Louise Bourgeois - there are allusions to an almost Surrealist sensibility. Lonsdale shares a mutual interest in the anthropomorphic forms that are stuffed and sewn. Her works unsettle the status quo for traditional ideas of sculpture and painting; responding as they do to the cold, pristine marble and bronze counterparts of art past, by offering soft, malleable forms that react to gravity in a more languid manner. These three-dimensional pieces are the genesis for whimsical images and narratives in her paintings. It is only after this first ritual of creation is completed that Lonsdale takes up the brush to begin work on her canvas.
Provenance
The Artist's Studio, Los AngelesDellasposa, London