Born in South Africa to two creative parents, Tarryn and her family immigrated to Canada when she was 9 years of age. Throughout her childhood, Tarryn was exposed to many art mediums and encouraged to use art as a creative outlet.
Not as a professional but as a hobbyist and lover of all things art, Tarryn’s amateur art portfolio grew under the name of Tarryn Thornton, primarily consisting of acrylic paintings, pencil sketches, marker art and eventually in early 2010’s she discovered mixed media art.
In 2013 Tarryn married and started signing her works under the name Tarryn Sanders, more commonly just the initials T.S.
In 2016, her love of mixed media art eventually lead her to start a youtube channel under the name “Tea Time With Tarryn” with the slogan “Grab a cup of tea and lets get crafting”. The channel was primarily to teach mix media arts and how to use unconventional products in the creative process. During one of these videos Tarryn demonstrated how easily you can use stamp pad ink refills as paint for projects. This demonstration planted a seed.
There was something about painting with inks that just took a hold of Tarryn and slowly she pulled away from other art mediums and started focusing on ink paintings, not months later when the inks were not found to be light fast, Tarryn gave lightfast watercolour paints a try.
In 2018, the name ‘Tea Time With Tarryn’ was then carried over to another live streaming platform called Twitch where she exclusively did watercolour painting demonstrations. There, an engaging audience, encouraged Tarryn to start publicly selling her art. It was then for the first time Tarryn started doing commissions and selling art prints. In 2019 Tarryn quit her job and become a full time artist.
In 2021 Tarryn divorced. Feeling she no longer wanted to sign her married name and not wanting to digress to her madden name once again, She dropped her last name all together and now signs her art as her first and middle name, Tarryn Hayley.
Tarryn continues to explore her passion of watercolor. She is a recent member of the Womans Art Association of Hamilton (WAAH) and is currently looking for opportunities to connect and grow with other like minded individuals.