While studying a Bachelor of Visual Arts Tiarna grew a fascination with mould, decaying surfaces, old wallpaper, and skin, which the artist states as "the fragile surface to a complex structure within”. This fascination carries through in the textural relationships she builds up in her canvases. Wallpaper, paper, dirt, silicon, flowers, cotton, rust are all relative to this artist’s use of eccentric materials. Tiarna mostly works on large scale surfaces, sometimes using odd materials, oil paint and other mixed media. By doing so, she can exploit her ideas and explore the depths of meaning behind them. At times, the creation of her work can be engrossing, which the artist finds cathartic. Although Tiarna completed formal training she was not taught to paint in the traditional sense, her painting practice relies on serendipity, her innate self-expression, and the viewers willingness to draw from uncomfortable places to create a bonding nostalgic feeling to her work.

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Tiarna’s work oscillates between irony and sincerity, using motifs from popular culture to project personal and feminine virtues of emotion. With an emphasis on personal feeling, she merges abstraction and representation with a childishness that is innocent juxtaposed with serio-comic depictions relating to Australian culture, the body, women's issues, and personal histories. 

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A brief review by Art Historian, Timothy Roberts taken from his personal Instagram -

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Among the gems there were Tiarna Stevenson’s paintings. Commenting on identities, especially those of women in modern culture. I saw an uncomfortable relationship with ocker Australian customs in the Debbie Hairy 2021. These paintings keep giving over time. The imagery is one aspect, but within the painting’s surface are trapped particulate matter or distortions to the canvas – literally the things that can get under your skin (Roberts, 2021).

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