The Tanya Artscape, is a place I created to consolidate my artistic expression and share any tips, observations and processes relative to my creativity. I have many interests. Not all my artistic endeavours are included here (like my music), but most of what I offer is found on this website.

The Dreamer Art Contest is named after my novel, a Young Adult Fantasy (Afrofuturism) adventure called Dreamer: The Activation of Makeba. It follows a girl called Thando who explores South Africa’s landscape, culture and magic while learning how to hone her magical abilities. The novel is a coming-of-age story of an underdog who finds her power from her ancestry and heritage. I wrote it not just as an anecdotal guide for my daughter’s multicultural background or as a love letter to my South African ancestors, but it was also written for my inner child because I would have appreciated a book so close to home growing up. Therefore, “Dreamer” was written for everyone’s inner child and for the young adult dreamers today navigating the difficult terrain of self-creation.

It may not be apparent to many, but I designed the book’s cover. The publisher doesn’t allow this from their authors, but I was given ‘carte blanche’ to do so because I could. This is the essence of this competition: to take words from my novel and make them into a piece of 2D visual art, just as I did on the book’s cover.

I am calling young artists to do the same. Thoughts, words and images are interchangeable in my mind. Thoughts arrive as pictures (still, flashes or moving scenes), and these “visions” evoke certain emotions that create a need to be expressed. I then interpret those mind images into words through speech or written words, into paintings or music, to evoke the same emotions in the viewer as the images evoked in me when I initially saw them in my mind. That is how I create, and this is the mission of this art contest: to explore the relationship between language imagery and visual imagery. It is a challenge for the young artist to go full circle with me, from the picture I had in my mind that I made into words to pictures again through this contest.

With this contest, I wanted to see how young minds could interpret this brief in their 2D visual art of choice, whether anime, sketching, painting, digital art, spray painting, or whatever is in vogue. Above that, I wanted to make it an exciting and inspiring venture for them. Art is often relegated to the bottom tier of importance in society, which is disastrous because art is how society evolves and how we learn who we are individually and societally. We can not correct the error of our ways without seeing ourselves, and art is the mirror that allows our self-evaluation. Hence, I was happy that the NYDA agreed. Art, creativity and cultural pursuits are important tools for youth development.

That was when I approached the NYDA with this art contest idea and asked for their assistance because we shared the same vision: to support, inspire, empower and equip young people through practical experience. Many types of artists exist in industries that aren’t “art-related”, like retail, education, publishing, medicine, and engineering, where literacy, comprehension and interpretation of words into visual art (and other media) are crucial. So, through this contest, young artists can taste such a process.

The NYDA and The Tanya Artscape's joint mission for this art contest is as follows:

• Youth Empowerment: This competition empowers young artists to explore their creativity, providing a platform to develop their artistic skills.

• Cultural Awareness: The competition promotes cultural awareness and heritage preservation among youth by incorporating South African mythology, daily life, traditions and landscapes.

• Gender Inclusivity: Encouraging girls and boys to participate fosters gender inclusivity by interpreting a book with a female protagonist, written by a female author, supporting the NYDA's commitment to empowering young women.

• Entrepreneurship: Exceptional participants may find entrepreneurial opportunities within the creative industry, aligning with the NYDA's goal of fostering entrepreneurship among youth in animation and visual arts through literature. Young artists can learn that visual arts are essential in unlikely industries like book covers, adaptations of books to animations, educational webtoons, and storyboarding.

• Literacy and Imagination: Engagement with the book's story and characters promotes literacy and imagination, strengthening reading and comprehension skills.

This is the first of many such initiatives from The Tanya Artscape. I look forward to seeing the great artworks that the young people of South Africa can produce, and as I write the second book, building new worlds, cultures and nations, I look forward to the next contest and the artwork that will be produced as The Dreamerverse grows.

Thank you for heeding this call,

Tanya