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More about Heading West

Read to learn more about the inspiration behind this new & ongoing collection of work.

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Tonja Vojacek Sell

In the beginning...

I’ve had a life-long connection to the southwest.  My parents moved to the Tucson area when I was very young.  I think that’s when the desert imprinted itself upon me.  I was impressed with the towering saguaros, crescendo  sunsets and human diversity.  The San Xavier mission and Desert Museum were childhood fascinations.

 

Most of my idyllic youth was spent on a hobby farm in a tiny rural woodland community near Lake Superior. My artist parents would return to the southwest for family vacations to visit my great grandmother in Tucson.  

 

After attending Art & Design school, my husband and I moved to the Phoenix area where we spent the first 6 years of our marriage.  We then moved back to the small town of my youth to build a life, home and studio. We continued, however,  to spend our winters in the southwest.  We enjoy road tripping as a family each year.   Together, we've camped, hiked, photographed and sketched much between Wisconsin and Arizona.

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Horses and family~

New adventures!

Our four children are almost grown now and we are spending more time West. We are taking the opportunity to explore all that it has to offer.  I keep my camera, sketchbook and paint box ever handy.  

 

I enjoy the contrast between the Southwestern and Northern Wisconsin landscapes.  They couldn't be more different.  I sketch and paint en plein air.  I may complete a painting on location or do studies that I may finish in the studio.

Growing up, we always owned horses.  My mother raced horses as a young woman and I grew up training, showing and gaming at the county fairs. Horses are beautiful, powerful animals with distinct personalities and idiosyncrasies.  As I spend more time in the west I expect they will make their way into my work more often.

We spend part of the long winter In Cochise County, AZ.  I have taken an interest in the wild horses that live near the Cochise Stronghold and Chiricahua National Forest and they have entered my paintings.  

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Why Indeginous Cluture?

A quest to experience history

I am interested in different cultures, people and customs.  From 2012 to 2020 my husband and I took artists on international art tours to Australia, Italy, France, Mexico and Spain.  I love making discoveries and experiencing history.  As we spend more time in the southwest I find that I am becoming increasingly interested in its unique history. 

 

My interest in Native American culture began at an early age.  I was fascinated as a child attending a Ojibwa powwow at the Red Cliff reservation near Bayfield.  My best friend growing up was Ojibwa.  The first book I illustrated after Art School was about a young Native American boy coming of age.  

 

My research on Native culture began then and has continued over the years.  I was commissioned by The Minnesota Discovery Center to create an Ojibwa and First Peoples interactive murals and cultural display and multicultural mural for the Carnegie Library in Minnesota.  I am currently researching vintage photographs and studying history of the west and painting people and scenes that inspire me. In doing so, I feel I am gaining a better understanding of our history as a nation and of its history makers.  

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Inspiration everywhere!

Always growing!

As an artist I find inspiration everywhere.  I love to paint people.  I find figurative work the most challenging and compelling.  I am interested in personal stories.  I cannot resist the powerful images of history makers and people of the old west.  I want to know their stories. By painting them I feel a bit of a connection both to them and to history.  Recently,  I have been researching Afro-Indigenous history.  My intention is to attempt to better understand, preserve, share and honor our unique American culture.

 

I describe most of my work as realist expressionism.  I am not interested in a super-real rendering of my subject.  Rather, I hope to capture a bit of the emotion or expression that is understandable, yet compelling.  I am as interested in design, color, mark-making and texture as anything else.  I enjoy the physicality and act of drawing and painting.  I work in several mediums, including pastels, oils, acrylics, clay, glass, mixed media sculpture & more.

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