Tanya Atkinson

I am a mixed-media ceramic artist based in Toronto. I was born in St Petersburg, USSR, lived in Cyprus in the 1980s, prior to moving to Toronto in 1990. After completing my MA in Geography/Environmental Studies at the UofT in 1995, I worked in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where I started taking my first pottery classes.
I returned to Toronto in 2003 and continued pursuing art and ceramics. In 2011 I finally founded my own studio from which I am currently working. I am specialising mostly in hand-built sculptural work. My love for nature results in wildlife sculpture while my abstract sculptural work is based on the human body and reflects the beauty of human figure lines.
The fact that I lived and worked in different parts of the world helped me to form a global understanding of art and culture and has tremendously influenced my work. My recent sculptural pieces intend to address environmental and socio-economic issues affecting all aspects of our world and often caused by human activities.