About This Watercolor Artist
In 1980, Tan attended a summer school at the American Academy in Chicago—Irving Shapiro was director of the watercolor program. She loved his strong paintings of the city and of the farmland of Illinois, and for her, it was the start of a full-time study of watercolors, with help from some great artists, including Zoltan Szabo, Nita Engle and Tom Lynch.
She has been a professional watercolor artist since 1984 and has been able to spend time in many different parts of the US—she loves the challenge of painting new places. She has just come back from Provence and the Basque Pyrenees, and has made frequent trips to her home in England. She sketches outdoors as often as she can but most of her work is finished in her studio in Chagrin Falls, Ohio.
Teaching has been a rewarding, enjoyable and important part of my life. Classes often inspire leaps in the development of young artists, and also in the abilities of adults investigating art in later life. Planning for my students also forces me to look carefully at what I am doing. They ask why? I need to know the answer! I am an instructor at the Chautauqua Institution in New York and I welcome private students to my studio."
Although all subjects are interesting to her, she may be best known for local Ohio scenes, and her most recent watercolors reflect her love of sailing and the sea.
She has exhibited and won awards in shows with the Georgia Watercolor Society, the Scottsdale Art League and the Midwest Watercolor Society, and has held many single artist exhibitions. She is represented by the Watson Gallery in Atlanta and Gallery One in Mentor, Ohio, and has watercolors and sketches in private and corporate collections (Marriott, Coca Cola, Oida, Cleveland Clinic) here and in England.