Tizta Berhanu explores humanity’s full spectrum of emotions in her figurative paintings. Narratives of love, faith, kinship, and motherhood flow across her gestural compositions. Bathed in swathes of jewel-like primary colours, Tizta’s figures are painted with expressive brushstrokes, often woven into layers of the canvas’s abstract background. Interlaced in each other’s embrace, her figures express the beauty of human touch.
Tizta’s vivid colour harmonies echo the underlying emotions of each work. Oscillating between dense brushstrokes and translucent washes, her paintings ebb and flow in a subtle equilibrium of soft opacity and glowing vibrancy. Her works bathed in oceanic blues, such as Combination in Turquoise (2023), Emotional Focus (2022), and Dreamers (2022), evoke waves of nostalgia. Paintings rendered in warmer palettes such as Love (2023) and Sisters Love (2022) swirl with vivacious reds and oranges to conjure the overwhelming feeling of love: for family, friends, or God. Her luminous yellow paintings–Close to the Ground (2023), Confluence (2022) and Love Triangle (2023)–evoke the warmth of physical touch. Figures converge as souls in each work, revealing the infinite possibilities of love and empathy.
