Contact & Bio

I’m TanOren, a disabled Welsh artist, from a small ex-mining village. I come from a poor, working-class background (my father was a miner, mother a barmaid), and growing up I had no encouragement or a reason to believe that my life would ever involve further education, a career or travel. Art was for ‘posh’ people and my fate was set in stone: marry young, work in the local factory, have kids, die (most of which, I did).
I began to draw again after a life changing illness.
Surviving enabled me to feel liberated from the fear of wanting to be an artist but being afraid of not succeeding because of my class and lack of education.
I felt I had nothing to lose and gained the confidence and freedom to feel comfortable in painting for myself, and create whatever moves me, use any material, and allow my curiosity to bloom in colour and gold leaf!

I’m self- taught, and my inspiration is mainly biographical, it’s a response to my lived experience as a disabled, Welsh woman.
Rather than creating works that are simply illustrations to a past story, or paint about a contemporary issue, I’m interested in the intersection between the past, and present and a wider narrative  – that one work of art can be applied to many situations, experiences, and themes, allowing the viewer to take make their own narrative for a piece, with my work pricking their imagination into connection.
Nothing pleases me more than hearing the viewers interpretation of a piece!
This is how I continue to learn and grow as an artist.

Education
BA Hons History & Media 1996 – 1999
PGCE Education 2003 – 2004
Bsc Hons Science 2005 – 2008

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Mentored by
Anthony Shapland (G39)
Letty Clarke & Melissa Hinklage (Artes Mundi)
Ruth Fabby MBE (artist)
Lisa Carter-Grist (Artist)Jo Marsh & Karen Whittingham (Ty Pawb)
Rachel Gadson (Artist)
Soroya French (Artist)
Jake Spicer (Artist)
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Exhibitions & Commissions

FANATIC at G39 Cardiff 17^th April  – 14^th June 2025
g | 39
What is your personal specialist subject? We all have particular things that we are alert to, things we are fans of, the collections, repetitions, accumulations of experiences or objects that run parallel with our everyday lives. Sometimes there’s a very fine line between the largely-positive word fan and the slightly-too-far fanatic. Sometimes these things are excitedly public, other times they are private, lone pursuits. Sometimes we might not fully understand what drives us toward them. We’ve brought nine artists together to respond to this prompt, with new works and existing collections.

Disability Arts Cymru – Recipient of the Disabled Artists Commission 2024/25
Artists Announcement

Spring 2025 – Celf Ar Y Cyd – ‘The Power of Two’, Eleanor and Sarah, The Ladies of Llangollen.
A commission to investigate ‘Art and the Body’ by accessing a piece of work from Celf Ar Y Cyd’s online collection. This written piece about the Lithograph of the Ladies of Llangollen, morphed into an audio piece and also a film of that audio. This will be available sometime in the spring on Celf’s website.

Galeri Open 2024/25 Galeri Caernarfon Cyf, Caernarfon, Gwynedd

Ty Pawb Open 2024/25 Tŷ Pawb

November 2024 – The Bridge That Connects, North Wales.
Portrait artist for Chirk.
The Bridge That Connects is a year-long community art placemaking project that has been exploring the vibrant cultural heritage of four historic Welsh communities within the UNESCO World Heritage Site, The Bridge that Connects, which is being delivered by Glandŵr Cymru, the Canal & River Trust in Wales, and funded by UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund with Wrexham County Borough Council.
THE BRIDGE THAT CONNECTS

June – July 6^th 2024 – Solo Exhibition at The Royal Cambrian Academy, Conwy
RCA Conwy | Home
Royal Cambrian Academy of Art – Art By TinaR

2024 onwards ‘F A T’ A new body of work examining what it is to be a fat and disabled person today. Other people’s perception of obesity, their bias, bigotry, and also health professionals attitudes towards fat people. Comprising Film, visual media, Art, photography, poetry, writing and interaction. This will be shown at Galeri in Caernarfon in June/July 2026
Galeri Caernarfon Cyf, Caernarfon, Gwynedd

2024 Commissioned by Celf Ar Y Cyd: Contemporary Art Collection of Wales, to produce a piece of Art about Politics, Protest and Activism! Tina created ‘Panopticon’
Being included in Celf ar y Cyd – The Contemporary Art Collection of Wales – Art By TinaR

2024 Commissioned by AXISWEB to write an article in response to the topic of artist exploitation, as explored at the Aberdeen Summit in 2023. 
‘Welcome to the Club? On Disability, poverty and exclusion in the Arts’
Artist Exploitation: ‘Welcome to the club? On disability, poverty and exclusion in the arts’ by Tina Rogers | Axisweb: Contemporary Art UK Network

2023 onwards Contributor to CWLWM magazine with Dylan Moore
Quirky Chirky: welcome to the ‘wild west’ of northeast Wales (substack.com)

2021 onwards Pobl Y Ffin (People of the Border), a community Arts collective based in North Wales who are creating an artistic (Art, Music, Poetry, performance) response to the history of the post-industrial mining Village of Chirk (Her home town).

2023 ‘Aildanio’ Open – Disability Arts Cymru, in several galleries including: Cynon Valley Museum, G39, Ty Pawb, Mostyn Galleries
Aildanio DAC Art Prize 2022-2023 (matterport.com)

2022 The Solidarity of Hope collective – ‘I see you’ Unity festival – Llanelli

2022 The Body and I (with Prea Kaur) Keele University. 

2021 Ruma Ripa Yogyakarta, Jakarta, Indonesia. 

2021 Our Picturesque Landscape Community Collaborative Art Project. Denbighshire Council

2021 Group Exhibition Keele University ‘Three Counties’ Arts open (winner of the Peoples choice award)

2021 Group Exhibition The Qube, Oswestry. Qube Arts Open (2^nd place)

2021 Group Exhibition Aberystwyth Arts Centre ‘Oriel Lockdown’

2019 Group Exhibition Café Wylfa ‘Greenside Artists’

2019 Group Exhibition Plas Newydd, Llangollen ‘Folk Tales from Wales’

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Awards

Winner of the Charles Bracken award for Art 2022-23
The Charles Bracken Award – SANE

Finalist in DACs ‘Aildanio’ open 2022 (second place)
Aildanio: DAC Art Prize Live on AM — Disability Arts Cymru

Long Listed for the Hollybush Painting Prize 2022

Recipient of the Jerwood Arts 1-1 fund December 2021
Artists – Jerwood Arts

Finalist in Aberystwyth Arts Centre ‘Oriel Lockdown’ 2021

First place in the Viewer’s Choice award  Keele University’s ‘Three Counties’ Open art show 2021

Finalist in Qube Art’s open 2021 Viewer’s Choice award (second place)

Finalist in DAC’s ‘Outdoors: Indoors’ 2020

 

Tan has been a participant/advisor in the following:

Panel Member for WEAREUNLIMITED Open Awards
October 2023 – March 2024
Unlimited UK Open Awards (weareunlimited.org.uk)

The DAM (Disability Arts Movement) in Venice 2024
Critical friend for Shape Arts
Discovering what themes and artists and works are missing from Pt 1 – 6 for the Venice Biennale 2024.
Biennale Arte 2024 | Homepage 2024 (labiennale.org)

Creativity is Mistakes 2023/24
a collaborative project between disabled artists and visual arts organisations in Wales. This project centres the voices, talents and lived experiences of disabled, Deaf and neurodivergent visual artists in developing innovative models for collective access in the visual arts
Creativity is Mistakes

Bring us our Creative Rights 2022
Disabled People’s Cultural and International Manifesto
Tina was part of the group who brought us Bring us our Creative Rights which was a manifesto designed to help/encourage disabled people’s ‘inclusion’ in the Arts in the hope that the Welsh Government and all Public sector organisations would commit to support the UNCRDP into practice.
DAC-Manifesto-2021.pdf (squarespace.com)

GALWAD 2022
produced by Collective Cymru, is a project commissioned by Creative Wales as part of ‘UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK’ Tina took part in this enterprise for 5 days as a ‘world builder’, and later as one of the ‘Galwad voices’.
Home | GALWAD

National Museum of Wales 2022
Workshop participant about MoW new digital Arts Website
Homepage | Amgueddfa Cymru | National Museum Wales

British Film Institute (BFI) & The London School of Drawing
ASTA NEILSEN & SILENT CINEMA  2022
 The Decline (AKA Downfall) + intro by season curator Pamela Hutchinson | BFI Southbank

Slade School of Art
Online event held by the Slade in celebration of International Colour Day, World Poetry Day and World Pigment Day.
Colour and Poetry 2022 – The Slade School of Fine Art (ucl.ac.uk)

Axisweb
‘From Radical Self-Care to Collective Wellbeing’ with Kajal Nisha Patel 
Axisweb – Contemporary Art & Artists

May 2023 – DAC & Ty Pawb – Aildanio exhibition ‘Icons’ – David Bowie. A workshop on collage and ink.
Portraiture Using Collage – An Online Creative Workshop with Artist Tina Rogers – Tŷ Pawb (typawb.wales)