Oil and graphite on cotton canvas, 1974. 457x610 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
Exhibited: Acts of Art, New York, with the ink stamp on the upper stretcher bar verso.
Born in Pittsburgh, Tanksley graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), Pittsburgh with a BFA in 1956. Tanksley then moved to New York where she studied at the Art Students League, the New School for Social Research, the Paulette Singer Workshop and the Printmaking Workshop.
In the 1970s, Tanksley was an inaugural member of Where We At: Black Women Artists, the New York based women's art collective, founded by Kay Brown, Dindga McCannon and Faith Ringgold. One of Tanksley's earliest group exhibitions was the collective's 1972 Cookin' and Smokin' exhibition at the Weusi-Nyumba Ya Sanaa Gallery in Harlem. She then had solo exhibitions at Acts of Art gallery in 1973 and 1974.
One of her most celebrated works is Images of Zora, a large group of 60 monoprints inspired by the writings of Zora Neal Hurston which she exhibited in 1991. She has received several corporate commissions from the Coors Brewing Company, Pepsi Cola Company, Absolut Vodka, and Colgate-Palmolive. Her work can be found in the collections of the Studio Museum in Harlem, the National Museum of Women in the Arts and the Hewitt/Bank of America Collection.
