Title: Remembrance
Artist: Tanya Hayes Lee
Medium & Materials: Oil on cradled wood panel
Dimensions: 10" × 10"
Remembrance is an intimate, square, abstract landscape that evokes a quiet coastal path, softened by dense marine mist. The composition suggests fragmented memories of place, using structured landforms, reflective water, and fine sgraffito linework to frame a secluded inlet beneath a vast atmospheric blue sky.
Gallery Description
In Remembrance, Tanya Hayes Lee presents a deeply contemplative landscape study on a compact 10" × 10" cradled wood panel. The composition follows a low-horizon structure, giving nearly two-thirds of the square surface to an expansive upper sky. Layered sweeps of pale cerulean and hazy slate blue dissolve into a dense fog bank near the horizon, capturing the cool dampness and softened visibility of a coastal morning.
The lower third transforms this quiet light into a structured, multi-planar landscape. A reflective ice-blue pool anchors the lower right, enclosed by blocky shoreline ridges built from loose passages of deep charcoal, raw umber, and olive green. Several dark, stylized silhouettes rise from the banks, suggesting weathered trees, stone outcroppings, or marsh forms. Fine vertical sgraffito lines cut through these dark shapes to reveal lighter underlayers, evoking wild grasses, textured bark, and the passage of time. A faint band of cream and sage green glows behind the central forms, adding a subtle pocket of internal light. Lee’s balance of heavy-body texture and airy atmosphere gives this small-scale work a profound sense of nostalgia, stillness, and quiet memory.
Style & Composition
- Artistic style: Abstract Impressionism with a lyrical Tonalist sensibility.
- Composition: A low-horizon square layout that prioritizes a vast atmospheric sky over overlapping horizontal land planes, balanced by an asymmetric foreground inlet and structured vertical masses.
- Focal point: The soft cream-colored opening in the center-left midground, where dark high-contrast forms divide and reveal a quiet glow.
- Color palette: Soft cerulean and slate blues balanced by earthy olive greens, warm raw umbers, crisp blacks, and a faint touch of cream.
- Lighting and atmosphere: Heavily diffused morning light filters through a dense marine layer, casting the foreground into rich shadow while giving the air a fresh, hushed mood.
Application & Technique
- Brushwork and mark-making: Loose, painterly, and varied, combining wide horizontal sweeps for the misty sky with flat structural blocks and fine vertical sgraffito lines carved into the dark forms.
- Layering and depth: Atmospheric perspective creates depth, with dark foreground shapes anchoring the view while the softly blended, lower-contrast sky recedes into the distance.
- Materials and tools: Heavy-body oil paint on a rigid cradled wood panel, using fine sgraffito liners 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.
