Featured Artist

What do an ice-skating competitor and instructor, roller skating coach, theater performer and choreographer, floral arranger, singer with a country album, and mixed-media artist have in common? They’re all together in one talented man, David “Tank” Tankersley.

Tankersley is originally from New Orleans. After a move to Tennessee, he started ice skating at age 13 and “never stopped.” Along with skating, he also developed an interest in music, theater, and dance. Leaving several years of competitive skating behind, at 19 he headed to New York City to pursue musical theater and contemporary dance.

Skating to dance to roller skating

The change and move took place, he said, because “I enjoyed musicals, and the pressure with them was less than competitive skating.” Skating had three big competitions a year. Musical theater was busier, but he “enjoyed doing something eight times a week,” performing in the usual musical show schedule. Taking a moment, he added that “skating and dance fed into each other, both creatively and physically.”

Skating remained part of his life and career. Moving easily from ice to roller skating, he was chosen to be skate captain for the original workshop production of the musical Xanadu, creating and teaching choreography for auditions of the show. This led to being cast as a feature skater, and later in the national tour as a specialty skater. “I was worried that I had made a mistake by giving up skating, but when I booked a Broadway show, I knew I was on the path I was supposed to be.”

The music bug

He tells an aside that while a dancer in a country revue in Tennessee, he “Got to be buddies with a musician who was recording in the basement. He worked with me on an album, Country Moon, with 11 songs. My credit is as the name David Aaron, my middle name, and we released it on my birthday, May 18.”  

While studying at American Music and Dance Academy, Tankersley met John Saunders, who is now the producing artistic director of the Mac-Haydn Theatre in Chatham, NY. “He was my RA and we became best friends.” 

Their friendship brought Tank to Columbia County. As he explains it, “I’ve been coming up since John was in 1776, in 2002.” Since then, Tank has been in several productions and created choreography and taught roller skating for two productions of Xanadu at MHT. Moving happened when “I was asked if I wanted to paint the theater, inside and out, and then COVID happened. I was five days from coming up.” The project was put on hold, “But I came anyway.” 

Let’s talk art

But enough about him. What about his art?

“My dad and my brother are artists. My first art started with a bunch of wooden pallets I found in a burn pile behind a barn, when I was in California. I grabbed one because I saw on Pinterest that you could make an herb garden in it. Then I saw an empty pocket, said ‘that needs something’ and I painted on it. I gave that to a roommate and made a couple more, but I didn’t have a way to ship them if sold.” 

“It all began with upcycling,” he explained, “I grabbed cabinet doors and painted on them.” Those also proved too large for many sales, though. 

“Then I discovered the miracle of canvas!” he continued. Starting with acrylic paints, he evolved to the oils he now uses.

A penchant for finding (or should we say scavenging?) interesting objects any and everywhere has further evolved his art into the mixtures displayed on the pieces he now creates.

“No joke. I find something while walking around and say ‘Oh my gosh, this is perfect for a piece.’” Case in point, when we met he was working on an astronaut, holding a tiny flashlight found in a parking lot, which shines down on a two-inch-tall alien floating in space, all surrounded by miniature flying saucers made from the jangle pieces of a tambourine broken in half.

He also deconstructs old jewelry. “Friends send me bags of ‘Granny’s jewelry,’ and I’ll pull items out and start working on a new piece.” Showing one of these bags, he said “Oh!” and pulled out a small tear-drop shaped iridescent pin, and stated, “This will go right into a piece.” 

Pointing to a small set of storage drawers, he laughed, “It’s like Narnia in there!”

Each piece takes about three months to create, he explained, “Because they all have a lot of detail.”

A favorite technique is to sew and embroider into the canvas, so it must be sturdy enough to hold the upcycled pieces without sagging, but soft enough to sew into. Misting the canvas with water and letting it dry adds strength to it. “It’s devastating to spend a month on something and then see it sag!” he mused, “Art takes a lot of deep breathing.”

Folded paper shapes, and even dried flowers, add texture and interest to other paintings.

Drawing inspiration

A recent vacation in Provincetown left Tankersley “inspired to make more art. I love Cape Cod, love the colors there. I’m coming back with different shades of blue; usually my art starts with a color, the next will be blue.” 

He also came back with an invitation to do a show at a gallery there, from the owner who said the Oriental-themed paintings especially resonated because he had lived in Japan. 

Although he is continually looking for outlets to show and sell his pieces, he noted that, “I am not making art with the idea of what’s gonna sell first. I’m making it with what truly inspires me in the moment, and then I hope it finds its audience.” 

Each piece starts with an idea. Creating the paintings is “Like it’s a bunch of little canvases in one piece. I frame each as its own thing, looking at 15 different sections of it. I sit in the chair and stare at the empty canvas like a crazy person. Usually, I have a form, then sketch that and stare at it for 100 years,” he laughed. “And then I’ll start.” 

To illustrate, he explained the current work in progress, “I want to make an astronaut. So, I do a silhouette and then mock out a basic pattern with pencil and ruler. Next, I paint the astronaut, and then I do the backgrounds.” After those parts are filled in, the found objects are added, art on top of art, which expands the subject and theme of the painting.

The embroidery and stitching add highlights of color, texture, and form, sometimes strongly and sometimes so subtle it takes several glances to see what has happened. 

Tactical with variety and texture

“Unlike in skating, in sewing, if you make a mistake, you can fix it,” he said, referring to seeing people in skating competitions fall.

 While often whimsical overall, his paintings usually surround a clearly recognizable main subject with very precise segments of shape and color. “I dabbled in abstract art, but … ,” his comment trailed off to let the listener finish the thought.

“Everybody wants to touch my art,” he noted, “especially children.” The amount and variety of textures and extras in each painting make this understandable. Children would be drawn to examining things like the miniature flashlight and alien with their own little fingers.

Tankersley has a hard time choosing favorites among his pieces, but eventually responded: “One of my favorite favorites is the King and Queen series. So, why are they hanging in my bathroom?”He went next to a painting of a woman, in red and black on white, with circles dancing on the background and triangularly creased paper in varied patterns highlighting sections of her pose and costume. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve repaired this,” he said, indicating the tip of one section that extended beyond the canvas. 

On another piece, long strands of yarn fall far below the edge of the canvas, from the hem of a subtly colored wrap a crouching geisha holds around herself.

Tankersley uses his artistic skills in his job with Chatham Flowers and his skating expertise as instructor at an Albany hockey arena.

Always thinking and planning

He exclaimed, “If I had all day to make art, I’d have so much fun!” When asked about plans for the future, he said, “because the pieces take so long, I’m not burying myself in them, but I always have something on the horizon. I have three in my head to start at some point, especially after the Cape Cod trip.” With a twinkle in his eye, he added “I have to make another trip to the store to get a canvas.” He noted that with always having something to work on he is never bored, but he admitted, “sometimes I pick something to watch on TV.”

While he has turned some of his scavenging finds into three-dimensional pieces, he also wants to learn to work with clay and do some sculpting. A dream is to have a little gallery. “Marketing is very hard, very tricky,” he admitted in regard to selling his works.

For part of the time we talked, Tankersley was stitching a strand of beads into the astronaut painting. When done, noticing it wasn’t completely straight and taut, he touched it up a bit, and then said, “just walk away. I don’t want to be a crazy artist, I just want to be an artist.”

Crazy? Not at all. An artist? Definitely! With unique, engaging, thought-provoking, delightful and, well, sometimes perhaps just a tiny bit crazy pieces to prove it. •