Her work is inspired by the drawings on rock and in caves made by man’s prehistoric ancestors.
A full-time professional artist, teacher, and lecturer, Teyjah McAren’s interest in symbols, hieroglyphics and pictograms was sparked after a month-long excursion she took in the American Southwest,where symbols abound.
The solitude and mystery of places such as Canyon de Chelly and Bandelier spoke volumes to her.
“Of course, this dialogue is fraught with conflicting views in the scientific world, so I just let the rocks speak,” said McAren. “The solitude and mystery are what I seek to represent in my work. The seeming simplicity of the petroglyph marks belie their labour intensive origin.”
McAren is showing her modern cave paintings for the month of October at Nadine’s Fine Art and Frames.
She has been a regular contributor to the Vernon-based commercial gallery for the last 12 years.
Based in Salmon Arm, McAren is an active member of the Federation of Canadian Artists and her paintings have sold throughout Canada in private galleries, at various exhibitions, and through commissions and the Internet.
“Her symbolic and hieroglyphic paintings are achieved with Golden gels and substrates and are spectacular and unique,” said Nadine's gallery owner Nadine Wilson. “Teyjah has achieved exactly what she wanted to, exploring mediums and recreating symbols and pictograms that could be thousands of years old.”