I was born in 1972 while my father was in US Army training. He was drafted right at the end of the Vietnam War. I was a second son, 18 months younger than my older brother. Eventually we were a total of 4 boys and 2 girls. I was named Tyler Tane Huntzinger, Tané, for the Maori creation god. My father had spent two years in New Zealand as a young man. He was enamored with Polynesian culture and often shared what he learned and stories of this transformative experience with us from an early age. This fueled our imagination and we were all eager to explore the world.
    The Paintings hanging in our homes were mostly works by my maternal grandfather, Robert Fiske Hightower. His family worked for the railroad here in Helper, UT for years before, and after, his birth. He passed before I was ever really able to know him, but was quite stuck by how “real” to me this person was because of these paintings that I saw every day. Pursuing a form of immortality through objects that endured after my passing became, and remains, irresistibly appealing.
    As a young child I had a difficult time learning to speak. The reactions to my stammer prompted me to quit trying to speak for a while. My older brother, my constant companion, assumed the communication responsibilities for me, until I resumed talking when I was convinced the stutter would not be a problem any longer, and it wasn't. We moved many times as I grew up. I rarely stayed in one school for more than a year. I was able to live for a couple of years each, in Yuma, AZ, and Mililani, HI. Though it was always exciting, this frequent relocation likely exacerbated the profound academic problems caused by a later diagnosed learning disability. The academic problems caused behavior problems and a social stigma, separating me from almost any contact with my peers.
    Most of my formative years were lived in different parts of Virginia. There, I often found myself retreating from a problematic childhood, alone or with siblings, to the "woods" which were residual strips of undeveloped forest, between the suburban houses, neighborhoods, and strip-malls. I became fascinated by the architecture of these forest ruins, and noticed I felt a kinship with the fauna also struggling to live among the humans. I was mostly into adulthood before I began to understand that everyone's childhood was disappointing on some level, and that most of us are left feeling detached and apart.
    I completed a Bachelor’s of Fine Arts from the University of Utah in 2000. I completed the whole “Painting and Drawing” program there and the whole of the “Ceramics” program as well. Much of several consecutive summers I spent in Helper at the intensive painting workshops created by David Dornan. I have since created quiet, moody-but-hopeful landscapes, and animal portraits using paints, resins, and pigments with less traditional mediums such as bitumen (tar), microscopic glass beads, and metal flakes and powders. Through carefully preserved "random" results in the repetitively painted and dissolved surfaces, I strive for an effortless look to the deep constructions with effects similar to those of the ceramic Shino glazes I lost myself in during the final years of university.
    The expansive but obscured vistas, flatted silhouettes, and melted forms of these paintings speak to the longing for connection so often associated with our increasingly technologically isolated society. But it has always seemed to me that an aching empty longing for something just out of reach likely feels uniquely personal to everyone, in every age.