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 “Over the years, my work has been a vehicle for story-telling and an opportunity to share
memories and dreams.. My own inner child continues to imagine, What if?... Very often people are curious, ‘who is that girl in the paintings?’ I tend to use my own face or loved
ones as models, which are readily available in my minds eye and I happen to know so well. I use them symbolically and am not especially preoccupied with academic
precision. Instead, I want to get to the skin underneath; fears, self-exploration & identity, emotions, and their relationships with the subconscious.
My most recent series includes domestic settings of children that are often frolicking in curious game-play within flowery wallpapered rooms. Upon closer inspection they are surprisingly adult-like and alive
within the narrative worlds that they are able to imagine into fruition.
I am also interested in the relationship between physical objects and longing or remembering -specifically the experience of
looking at an old piece of fabric, a photo, or old dress and the idea of it containing a lost moment or a key to a heart's desire.”
-ARTIST STATEMENT
Tonya Engel was born in Houston, Texas and traveled extensively in the US and Europe before settling in New York.
Although she has had no formal art training, she was fortunate enough, over the course of a sixteen year career, to have had a series of mature and accomplished artists as mentors. The renown Russian Western artist, Marcos
Ivanhov opened his studio on weekends to teach free life-drawing classes and color theory to a small group of students that included Engel. She also fell under the mentorship of the artist Burford Evans and the tutelage of
Channe Felton. She lists among her early influences the artists Jacob Lawrence, Marc Chagall, Romare Bearden and
Balthus. Later, while living in Miami, she was exposed to the raw, riveting, and often political, work of Cuban and Haitian artists .
Engel tells stories in ways that arouse our curiosity, delight our senses and evoke our emotions. And she hopes, she
says, to achieve a connection with the viewer that reaches beyond the surface. Her curious and whimsical figurative
paintings, though highly subjective and largely biographical, offer a fresh viewpoint on issues of image, identity and
relationships. Her subjects, mostly women, are often engaged in activities that range from the everyday to the eccentric, but their blank, vacuous faces imply a dream world that lends itself to psychological interpretation. An
artist who came of age in the 90’s, her work reflects a contemporary eye and an acute consciousness of composition, color and pattern and she incorporates decorative elements to provoke a visceral response.
Engel’s work can be found in public and private collections across the United States. She has been the recipient of awards including a three-month residency in Paris, France.
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