Stephen Tanis is a painter and Professor Emeritus at the University of Delaware where he taught both painting and drawing in the Department of Art for nearly thirty years. He received a BFA from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA in painting from the Cranbrook Academy of Art.

Tanis has been the recipient of three individual artist fellowships from the Delaware State Arts Council: the first for painting, the second for works-on-paper, and the third, a Masters fellowship in 2002 for painting. In that same year, Tanis received a Delaware Governor’s Award in the Arts. He has also received individual fellowships from the Hereward Lester Cooke Foundation and the John F. and Anna Lee Stacey Foundation. Tanis has had over twenty five solo exhibitions of his work in galleries and museums including eight shows at the Sherry French Gallery in New York City and six shows at the Jane Haslem Gallery in Washington, DC.

In 2009, Stephen Tanis was honored with a retrospective show at the University of Delaware Museum that spanned forty-one years of his painting. His work is included in numerous public and private collections throughout the United States, the UK and Europe.