Draw Closer: Tizta Berhanu

Tizta Berhanu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1991 where she has lived and worked her entire life. Tizta developed her passion for painting and drawing at an early age. Her love for drawing led her to study art in a private school called "Enlightenment Art Academy" after two years of formal training she joined the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design for further studies, where she studied under Tadesse Mesfin and received her BFA in 2013.

Since her graduation, she has been experimenting and searching for new ways to find her unique voice through her favoured medium, painting. While she was studying for her undergraduate degree, Berhanu became fascinated by exploring all the facets of emotion in her art work. She portrays her subjects expressing love, hate, and sadness. However, of all the feelings manifested by human kind, sorrow is the one that drives Berhanu to create.

Her paintings are often ambiguous, almost unrecognisable, painted with broad confident brush strokes in deep intense colours. Blues, purples and deep sea greens, dominate the canvasses creating an almost uncomfortable atmosphere wherein the viewer comes voyeuristically close to the emotions of the portrayed.