Tanja Hester is a multidisciplinary activist, artist and author based in North Lake Tahoe, California. In her visual art, she creates large-scale, color-shifted works in oil, acrylic, pastel and mixed media that address broad societal injustices through a personal lens. Inspired by the immunodeficiency she was born with and the degenerative joint disease that has become a disability, Tanja’s work gives viewers a glimpse into a world isolated by necessity, where reality and the fantastical often merge. Her recent work exposes aspects of disability and chronic illness that many viewers are unlikely to have considered, explores her distorted reality that grew out of COVID-19 era isolation, and depicts scenes of beauty within the horror of climate change. For example, in her “Unfinished” series, Tanja references typical unfinished portraits, but rather than finish the head and little else, as art viewers are accustomed to seeing, her self-portraits are complete only in the areas she can reach while laying or sitting on the floor, reflecting her limited energy and painting ability during...