Tanisha grew up a 90s kid surrounded by colour: big bottles of acrylic paint, magic water books where colours appeared with a swipe, and any pen or ink that changed and bloomed with water. Art was the first language that really made sense. As life got more serious, the time for it slipped away. What stayed were occasional sketches: small metaphors on paper when feelings were too tangled to put into words.

Years later, in what she'd later think of as a dark night of the soul, she found herself reaching back to that childhood safe place. This time it was through alcohol inks, a medium with very few rulebooks, forgiving and chaotic at once. It let her play like a kid and still negotiate control: guiding the flow without ever fully owning it. The more she worked, the more it felt like a map back to herself. Being welcomed into an art community made it stick.

At the same time, she was helping early-stage startups get their ideas off the ground. Over coffee one day, someone asked her: "What's it like working so hard on someone else's dream?" Blank Slate Studios was the idea that stayed closest to her chest, the one that could hold both her art and her instinct for building things for others.

Tanisha has always worn a lot of hats on purpose. She thinks in yin and yang: strategy and feeling, structure and instinct. To honour that, she created a separate artist identity, Deriva, so the work can breathe as its own thing while the founder part of her holds the wider experiment.

Her practice began as small, nature-infused studies. Now she's stretching into bigger scales and more layered narratives. Whatever the subject, her work mirrors how her brain naturally operates: zoomed into extreme detail, then pulled back to see how the whole thing hangs together.

• Playing with scale and seeing what happens as the work grows larger
• Building a cohesive series that tracks her move from abundant greenery to full city-life
• Making room for newer parts of herself that haven't yet made it onto paper

• A series that blends the grind of everyday life with a quieter, spiritual through-line
• A collaboration-led collection with other artists, using an approach she's deliberately holding until the timing feels right
• A deeper presence in art community spaces across Australia, creating ways for other artists and people who wear many hats to feel less alone in their journey

Tanisha is an emerging visual artist and founder of Blank Slate Studios. As Deriva, she creates layered, mixed-media work that often starts with nature and ends up somewhere between inner landscape and map.

As the founder of Blank Slate Studios, she is also the first artist to put her own work through the "walking gallery" experiment before opening the platform up to others.

Tanisha grew up a 90s kid surrounded by colour: big bottles of acrylic paint, magic water books where colours appeared with a swipe, and any pen or ink that changed and bloomed with water. Art was the first language that really made sense. As life got more serious, the time for it slipped away. What stayed were occasional sketches: small metaphors on paper when feelings were too tangled to put into words.

Years later, in what she'd later think of as a dark night of the soul, she found herself reaching back to that childhood safe place. This time it was through alcohol inks, a medium with very few rulebooks, forgiving and chaotic at once. It let her play like a kid and still negotiate control: guiding the flow without ever fully owning it. The more she worked, the more it felt like a map back to herself. Being welcomed into an art community made it stick.

At the same time, she was helping early-stage startups get their ideas off the ground. Over coffee one day, someone asked her: "What's it like working so hard on someone else's dream?" Blank Slate Studios was the idea that stayed closest to her chest, the one that could hold both her art and her instinct for building things for others.

Tanisha has always worn a lot of hats on purpose. She thinks in yin and yang: strategy and feeling, structure and instinct. To honour that, she created a separate artist identity, Deriva, so the work can breathe as its own thing while the founder part of her holds the wider experiment.

Her practice began as small, nature-infused studies. Now she's stretching into bigger scales and more layered narratives. Whatever the subject, her work mirrors how her brain naturally operates: zoomed into extreme detail, then pulled back to see how the whole thing hangs together.

• Playing with scale and seeing what happens as the work grows larger
• Building a cohesive series that tracks her move from abundant greenery to full city-life
• Making room for newer parts of herself that haven't yet made it onto paper

• A series that blends the grind of everyday life with a quieter, spiritual through-line
• A collaboration-led collection with other artists, using an approach she's deliberately holding until the timing feels right
• A deeper presence in art community spaces across Australia, creating ways for other artists and people who wear many hats to feel less alone in their journey

Tanisha is an emerging visual artist and founder of Blank Slate Studios. As Deriva, she creates layered, mixed-media work that often starts with nature and ends up somewhere between inner landscape and map.

As the founder of Blank Slate Studios, she is also the first artist to put her own work through the "walking gallery" experiment before opening the platform up to others.