Tanya Hastings Gill

Under Skin.

Tanya Hastings Gill grew up in northern California and studied art at the Chicago Art Institute and got her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies around the world.

Her Under Skin series was born out of a year of extensive travel, which included six weeks in Capetown, South Africa and several months in Mumbai, India. The pieces are cutout paper. Layers beneath the suggest both the inside and outside of the figure. The backs of the pieces are painted in colors that reflect on the wall and change with differing light and shadow. Here is what Tanya has to say about them.

Our skin is a diffuse boundary where sensations are felt and impressions made. It is the meeting place of the external and the internal. Under our skin, these meetings are processed, emotions felt, and impressions housed. Our bodies remember impressions, consciously and/or unconsciously. We rely on these impressions to build our existence, form our beliefs and construct our illusions.

Much like our skin, paper is a delicate barrier which protects and contains the many illusions of artistic space. Incisions into the surface of the paper invade this artistic space, simultaneously supporting, transforming and destroying these illusions. The incisions emphasize the pure, white paper as a medium, while revealing another dimension: the space beyond the paper.
This space glows with light that passes through the incisions. It is filled with silhouettes and shadows that mingle and mix with reflective color from the underside of the paper. The shadows and reflective color continually react to the changing light, atmosphere and air currents. The space is fluid, susceptible, contradictory, elusive and tenuous.

Under Skin strives to represent these internal sensory contradictions, moments of impression, and elusive feelings. Under Skin simultaneously reveals the exterior, the internal and the fluid space between.