Tanner Lemon (taNr)

artist statement — 2026

I use art to heal. I follow my inspiration wherever it leads, and when I don’t, a part of me feels missing.

I love trying new mediums, but I always return to painting and making music, which are my two safest places to create. Sculpture has stayed with me as an idea for years as I keep looking for its right form, and other kinds of art arrive in more occasional ways. Across all of it, the constant is healing: I make to heal myself, and I love sharing that healing so the people around me can be moved to heal in similar ways. Inspiring other people is one of my favorite parts of being an artist, and it happens most when I simply make whatever I want to make.

My current body of work, this way through the sadness, was made in the wake of my sister’s death — a sustained project of paintings, objects, music, and film that turns daily grief into daily healing. Alongside it, my inspiration centers on my own creativity, personified as a “blurry friend.” For a long time I was hard on myself for following my inspiration, but I’m relearning how important it is to me and my family, and how to follow it freely again. I’m drawn to the sense that everything is interconnected and that the less I try to structure and order things, the more freely I can exist. Somewhere in all this, the line between me and the work has worn thin enough that I’ve started to say it plainly: I am art.