Tanja Truscott

Tanja Truscott is a Netherlands-born South African artist whose expressive abstract paintings are shaped by colour, movement and an intuitive response to the world around her. Working from her Cape Town studio, she finds inspiration in landscapes and gardens, as well as music, poetry, memory and the sensations of a particular place.

Rather than describing these influences literally, Truscott allows fragments of colour, line and form to emerge through the painting process. She works instinctively, building up and covering layers of oil paint so that traces of earlier marks remain visible beneath the surface. This balance between revealing and concealing gives her paintings their depth, energy and sense of discovery.

Her recent Backyard series brings this approach closer to home. Responding to the abundance, movement and untidiness of a garden, these works are not conventional botanical studies but impressions of a living environment experienced over time. They invite us to slow down, look more closely and form our own connections with what we see.

Born in the Netherlands in 1961, Tanja Truscott lives and works in Cape Town. She completed a BA in Graphic Design at Stellenbosch University in 1984 and a Diploma in Secondary Teaching at the University of Cape Town in 1990. After working as an art teacher, illustrator, graphic designer and art director in educational publishing, she turned to painting full-time in 2017.

In 2022, Truscott was one of four artists selected for the Nando’s Creative Exchange mentorship programme. This culminated in exhibitions at Constitution Hill and the Association for Visual Arts Gallery, followed by a presence at the Latitudes Art Fair in Johannesburg in 2023.

Her exhibition history includes Home Is Where the Art Is at Zeitz MOCAA, Nano 1.3 at Barnard Gallery and The Shipping Forecast at StateoftheART. In 2022, she curated Abstract*d at StateoftheART, bringing five artists together in a visual conversation through line, colour, shape and texture. Her 2026 solo exhibition, Without Words, marked a return to drawing with a contemplative body of abstract works created in oil paint on prepared paper.

Truscott’s work forms part of the Nando’s collection and is held in private collections in South Africa and abroad.

Which new trends or South African artists do you find inspiring at the moment?
Perhaps not a new trend, but abstract expression has recently become more visible in South African galleries. I find it encouraging that there is a market out there for artists such as Emma Aspeling, Jeanne Hoffman, Mary Visser, Lucy Jane Turpin, Penelope Stutterheim, Jill Trappler and Gabrielle Kruger. All women!

If you could only have one piece of art in your life, what would it be?
It would probably be a large painting by Rothko.

How did you get started? Did you always want to be an artist?
I have always been interested in visual communication. Initially through illustration and graphic design, but more recently in a more personal way, through drawing and painting. There is so much we can learn from artists as they interpret the world in so many different ways.

What are some of the key themes you explore in your work?
I am drawn to landscapes in the widest sense. I explore my response to a particular physical environment, but sometimes work directly to an idea, or music or a few lines of poetry that intrigue me.

What should people know about your art that they can’t tell from looking at it?
At the beginning this painting looked very different to this! It has probably undergone many transformations. This makes the whole creative process so exciting; the fact that I have no idea what the painting will look like when I start!
 
Tell us more about your creative process.
I explore ideas in notebooks, through various media such as collage, ink or gouache, either within a landscape, or to music or poetry. Once I feel ready I work intuitively and mostly from memory.
I start off loosely and expressively and then I let the painting take me.
Sometimes I have no theme in mind and work purely with shapes, lines and textures, building the final artwork up through many layers.

What drives you as an artist?
My curiosity. And the idea there is so much to explore.

Do you have a favourite or most meaningful work?
My latest work is usually my favourite work! There is always a sense of excitement as I push into new territory and find closure; when I know the painting is ready to go into the world and hold its own.

What is your greatest achievement as an artist to date?
To have exhibited alongside local, up and coming (and established) artists. There is so much exciting young talent in South Africa.

What are your aspirations for the future?
Paint bigger, be bolder.

 

Learn more about Tanja and see behind the scenes in her studio in our artist feature here