My Life Journey and what drives me to create Visual Art

Tanja van Biljon was born in Johannesburg and grew up in a diverse cultural home with an Austrian father and an Afrikaans mother.

She was raised in Pretoria in a German community where she attended the German School and later received formal training at the University of Pretoria completing an honours degree in Visual Arts, majoring in Painting.

Tanja currently resides in Johannesburg where she practices her artwork and teaches Visual Arts as a school subject to high school children.

In 2017 she curated an exhibition in Maboneng (Arts on Main) at the Gavin Project Gallery with the title and concept “Diverse Beauty”.

She exhibited her own work in collaboration with 12 other South African artists who based their work on the theme “Diverse Beauty”

visually expressing South Africa’s diverse identity.

She Exhibited her work with 12 other SA Artists including

Gerhard van Vuuren, Ronel Kellerman, George Holloway, Corlene Furstenberg

Celebrating South Africa’s unique identity with many diverse cultures is a great source of inspiration to Tanja. She is influenced by the variety of ethnic tradition and visual symbols that reflect a South African “feel” with a touch of European flair. Her work reflects what she experiences and sees during her travels in other countries that impacted her.

Yet she remains a South African at heart and has many times quoted: “South Africa your soil flows through my veins! “

A prominent theme she explores and uses in her work is healing from the past experiences of a nation once divided. She states

“Personal experiences shape us and if people we are fond of, who are part of our lives are affected, it makes it even more personal“

Therefore to cross cultural barriers is another theme she uses in her work.

This is my country South Africa in which I am born, so that makes me a South African, born and bred. I was raised here, meant to be here.

My father is Austrian my mother an Afrikaner. I grew up in two worlds, not really conforming to one specific culture.

This “mix” is actually a privilege because it opens up more than one world to you as you grow up. The European side gave me a glimpse into the “German” language, culture and education.

I was in a German multi-cultural school in the Apartheid era and my whole family befriended other cultures.

I can also recall that we had bomb-scares at our school and often we had to practice drills for in case the threats we received from the government would really take place. So, from my school days in the 80’s & early 90’s I was confronted with the tense political climate of our country.

The shock came to me one day when during my matric year me and a group of friends wanted to enter a restaurant in Pretoria and were told that we were not allowed to enter because one of our friends was a colored. At first I thought it was because we looked under-aged and that they didn’t want to serve us alcohol, I still tried to convince the manager we won’t order alcohol. His reply left me cold: “No, it’s because she is black!”  The worst of this experience was witnessing my friend’s expression of pain, the memory of it, still brings tears to my eyes. Personal experiences shape us and if people we are fond of who are part of our lives are affected it makes it even more personal.

Tanja works mainly in oil colours on canvas and has a style leaning towards post-impressionism and Symbolism and makes use of vibrant contrasting colours. She is influenced by Austrian artists Gustav Klimt, Dutch artist Van Gogh and South African artists like Irma Stern and Gerard Sekoto.