Tanya Wischerath is a classically trained painter whose recent work departs from portraiture to explore imagined ecologies—lush, fungal worlds that serve as metaphors for queer survival and transformation. Drawing on years of training at the Florence Academy of Art and earlier studies at California College of the Arts and Moore College of Art and Design, Wischerath combines technical precision with surreal, emotionally charged environments.
Her paintings depict shadowed groves, caverns, and anthropomorphic fungi—spaces that feel protective, fertile, and alive with unseen intelligence. Often working in oil, ink, and gouache, Wischerath builds intimate terrains shaped by her lived experience as a queer person and her reverence for nonhuman forms of resilience. In her work, fungi serve as both symbol and structure: decentralized, adaptive, and quietly revolutionary.
She finds inspiration in mycelial networks—hidden systems of connection that thrive beneath the surface and metabolize decay into new life. In a time of political erasure and ecological crisis, Wischerath turns to these overlooked organisms as models for resistance and renewal. Her paintings suggest that queer communities, like fungi, flourish in marginal spaces, creating regenerative alternatives to failing systems.
Wischerath’s work has been exhibited internationally, including as a finalist in the BP Portrait Award at London’s National Portrait Gallery. In 2024, her painting By the Letter was acquired by the Bakersfield Museum of Art for its permanent collection. Her public murals can be found in San Francisco’s Castro and Mission districts, including a tribute to the 1966 Compton’s Cafeteria Riot as part of the Clarion Alley Mural Project. She has shown work at institutions including the Haight Street Art Center and the de Young Museum.
Through layered mark-making and visionary imagery, Tanya Wischerath invites viewers into speculative landscapes that honor queer endurance, ecological intelligence, and the beauty of what grows in the dark.
