Title: Heartbeat
Artist: Tanya Hayes Lee
Medium & Materials: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 16" × 16"
Heartbeat is a powerful, atmospheric square landscape that captures the raw energy of an elemental shoreline beneath a moody sky. The work centers on a moment of natural tension, as a sudden flare of golden sunlight breaks behind dark, blocky cliffs and casts an electric blue reflection across a churning coastal pool.
Gallery Description
In Heartbeat, Tanya Hayes Lee presents a deeply evocative, texture-rich abstract landscape on a 16" × 16" square canvas. The composition is built through strong horizontal bands, anchoring the view with a rugged shoreline of heavy, block-like landforms rendered in charcoal, deep umber, and moody forest green. At the left edge, a textured burst of cream and silver-white paint breaks over the stones, suggesting the tactile force of surf crashing against a rocky headland.
The emotional force of the painting lies in its high-contrast treatment of light and color. Behind the central ridge, a narrow band of golden ochre and bright amber cuts through the dark coastal weather like a sudden sun flare. That warmth meets an expansive foreground channel of deep cerulean and sapphire blue, creating a striking temperature contrast. Above, a misty sky is scumbled in cool slate gray and pale steel blue, with subtle vertical streaks that suggest falling rain or dissolving coastal fog. Lee’s confident, loaded brushwork preserves the scene’s raw atmospheric power, making the work a compelling focal point for a fine art collection.
Style & Composition
- Artistic style: Abstract Impressionism with a contemporary Tonalist sensibility.
- Composition: A grounded horizontal layout within a square format, using a low, heavy horizon of jagged rock forms to anchor the expansive atmospheric sky.
- Focal point: The brilliant golden-yellow sunburst flaring behind the central rock ridge, set in sharp contrast against the surrounding dark stone faces.
- Color palette: A sophisticated high-contrast scheme of deep slate gray, indigo, and charcoal, sharpened by electric cerulean blue, rich golden amber, and copper tones.
- Lighting and atmosphere: Dramatic backlit sunset or clearing-storm illumination, creating a raw, moody coastal environment filled with quiet mystery.
Application & Technique
- Brushwork and mark-making: Highly varied and gestural, combining thick directional impasto for the craggy stone blocks and frothy wave foam with softer scumbled vertical strokes that shape the misty sky.
- Layering and depth: Strong value and temperature contrast create spatial depth; the saturated amber light strip and vivid blue pool pull forward, while the muted gray sky recedes into the background.
- Materials and tools: Heavy-body oil paint on fine stretched canvas, applied with stiff bristle brushes to score complex organic textures directly into the paint layers.
Inventory Status: Available for purchase online or in the gallery.
Shipping / Pickup: Shipping is available, with items securely packaged in professional archival materials, insured, and shipped globally; complimentary local pickup is also available at our 23 North Main Street gallery.
