Title: Inception
Artist: Tanya Hayes Lee
Medium & Materials: Oil on cradled wood panel
Dimensions: 10" × 10"
Inception is an intimate square abstract landscape that captures a misty woodland threshold bordering a quiet coastal inlet. The work explores a moment of emergence, as a dense veil of rain or fog opens above a textured ridge line, revealing a bright central pocket of light.
Gallery Description
In Inception, Tanya Hayes Lee presents a quiet, atmospheric landscape study on a compact 10" × 10" cradled wood panel. The composition uses a low-horizon structure, giving nearly two-thirds of the square frame to an expansive upper sky. Layered vertical sweeps of pale periwinkle, silver-white, and steel blue suggest falling rain or dissolving marine fog. Near the center, a bright column of light breaks through the sky and casts a soft, ethereal glow over the wetlands below.
The lower third transforms this cool ambient light into a structured, multi-planar landscape. A quiet ice-blue pool settles into the lower left corner, bordered by rolling dark ridges built from loose passages of charcoal black, raw umber, and forest green. Rising from the right-center bank, a stylized fan-shaped tree cluster creates the composition’s main dark anchor. Lee uses fine calligraphic sgraffito to scratch into these dark forms, revealing a pale underlayer that evokes winter branches, wild marsh grasses, and delicate organic tracery. The result is a peaceful, sophisticated small-scale painting that balances deep foreground shadow with an airy, mist-filled sky.
Style & Composition
- Artistic style: Abstract Impressionism with a lyrical Tonalist sensibility.
- Composition: A low-horizon square layout that prioritizes an expansive, vertically streaked sky over a highly textured foreground terrain, balanced by an asymmetric dark focal mass in the right midground.
- Focal point: The luminous central axis where pale blue sky light descends behind the prominent fan-shaped tree cluster.
- Color palette: A soothing cool-toned range of pale periwinkle and steel blues, balanced by earthy olive greens, warm raw umbers, crisp blacks, and silver-white highlights.
- Lighting and atmosphere: Soft, heavily diffused morning light filters through rain or low coastal fog, creating a quiet, meditative, and fresh wilderness mood.
Application & Technique
- Brushwork and mark-making: Loose, painterly, and varied, combining wide vertical dragging and scumbling to suggest rain and mist with blocky paint applications and fine sgraffito lines carved into the dark structures.
- Layering and depth: Strong atmospheric perspective creates depth, with dark, high-contrast foreground shapes anchoring the view while the softly blended, low-contrast sky recedes into the distance.
- Materials and tools: Heavy-body oil paint on a rigid cradled wood panel, using fine sgraffito tools and wide flat bristle brushes to preserve crisp graphic patterns alongside smooth atmospheric transitions.
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.
