Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tanya Beyer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Tanya, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

Almost all my artwork equally has meaning to me in the sense I feel I’m glorifying what’s most startled me with wonderment at the hand of the divine. Who made us all? Whoever did, whoever saw through the evolutionary process as it carried itself out, seems likely to have laughed with delight, even as I sometimes do, on beholding even just one animal or plant as it came into being, or showed me itself. I feel, like many an artist, that I have to reveal that delight of discovery, or awe in the almighty power that set forth all natural life we see today. And human pressure on the natural world is causing us to lose a lot of species as they fade from habitat degradation toward extinction.

Is there a great divine Creator? Who created consciousness and sensory perception? Whoever did all too apparently did it in a spirit of zest, love, delight and wonder, which are also part of our mortal experience. My Christian upbringing teaches that God is love and Jesus the chief messenger of divine love; regardless of formal faiths, and regardless of the predatory instincts and behaviors that are also a part of nature, it is love and wonderment that make life go forth and multiply.

And yet there are limits that have to be faced. In our time, much of humanity is trying to own the earth and take it over for the supposed benefit of all humankind. In nature there are balances between species, much as there are awe, fear and wonderment felt by one species for another. I want my art to serve as a force in reminding people that we are increasingly lost souls as we continue to grow our human enterprise at the expense of life’s natural, wild diversity in its grand beauty all around us. Hence my business name: Epiphanies Afield.

Tanya, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I was the fortunate firstborn child of two educated, midlife parents who both taught English, lived in the country and had a collection of art books and great works of literature. We were based in rural central Indiana but spent spring and summer weeks at a time on the Canadian shore of Lake Superior where they had been able to buy land. Early in life I felt, and must have been raised, to be protective of and admiring of animals and trees that lived nearby. I developed a pull within me toward northern, thinly populated lands and tried, as a young U.S. citizen with rudimentary employment skills, living in Canada, mainly as a student at Western University in London, Ontario. My sister who studied at Carleton College in Northfield, MN persuaded me to move instead to Minnesota. So here is where I’ve spent my adult working life since age 22, finding my way ever northward, learning how to use watercolors and blending in extra media such as pastel, colored pencil and ink on artworks within state and county parks or in my yard planted as much as I had time with native wild plants. In 2019 I moved in with and married my delightful husband who maintains the old family farm homestead within the bounds of the Superior National Forest.

Is there a particular goal or mission driving your creative journey?

I would like to see worldwide a new value placed on social and business stability rather than growth, as it’s said, for growth’s sake. Perpetual human growth degrades all the rest of earth that isn’t already devoted to supporting people on some level. I would hope that, however much human suffering ends up being required as a driving force, a future generation learns that happiness is generated by diverse life finding itself in close quarters, that no other situation is so worthy of protecting and upholding, and that there ends up being new, worldwide value on nature as it serves us and we serve it. Within this value would also be found new value toward the diversity of people, formed by wherever they came from.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

A long struggle for me involved how to earn a living. It seemed that in being raised to be a writer and artist, as I was, I was only able to downplay development of other skills, which I had to build slowly, with whatever help I could find, right within the workplace or within some of the best Minneapolis-St. Paul-area temp agencies. I felt lucky, during my late thirties, to finally be in a corporate work setting–it was a call center full of tech support staff–where I could put my writing and communication skills to use in the work flow.

Despite all the help there was to be had, and that there is now, for artists to learn to make a living with their art, all the help I’ve made use of never enabled me to make better than a partial living by creating and selling art. Many young artists confront this problem and know the frustration of it. But necessarily acquired other work skills will invariably come to your service as you attempt to promote and sell your work.

I believe, though I’ve repeatedly met up with people who try arguing with me, that my artwork will mainly only sell to folks who are eco-literate, interested in species of native wild birds and plants, and that no amount of promoting my work will cause it to sell widely to buyers with a more urban outlook. So, retired now from the corporate workforce, I find I am able to live out a dream of the world, for our collective survival’s sake, adapting with my own values as a creative artist taken to heart, because for diversity’s sake nothing else will work so well.     

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.epiphaniesafield.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tanyabeyer.epiphaniesafield/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EpiphaniesAfield
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanya-beyer-hovi-7502331b/