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ABOUT
STATEMENT
Our connection to the natural world in this time of environmental instability, is often suffused with a romantic longing for connection, leading us to fill our domestic interiors and gardens with plants. I value plants for their beauty but I am also impressed with how clever they are at adapting to changes in their environment, communicating via their root systems and developing characteristics that ensure their survival. Despite this apparent resiliency, plant species are disappearing at an extinction rate that is 500 times faster than would be without human influence. Some plants exist only as commercially grown products in gardening centers, their counterpoints in the wild having long vanished.
In this recent series of paintings and works on paper, I use images of plants that are extinct or very rare or who are simply strange hybrids that spring from my imagination. They are either depicted as part of an imaginary greenhouse (perhaps the last greenhouse on earth?) where they are being sheltered or they are depicted as voids surrounded by the noise and chaos of the outside world. These scenarios can also be seen as reflecting our own precarious position within the ecosphere. Does the noisy external world of the artificial now exist more vividly in our day-to-day reality than our memory of our very fragile and necessary natural environment? Will future generations experience the natural world from within the environment of sheltering greenhouses or even virtually, where plants cross-breed and hybridize, much like animals in a zoo, creating specimens that no longer have any ability to survive outside their carefully constructed artificial environment?
These mixed media works are on paper and panel, created with acrylic, utilizing graphite and hand painted collage elements as well as vintage maps, fabrics and other ephemera.
BIOGRAPHY
Teresa Stanley is an abstract painter based in Northern California. Born in Los Angeles, her work delves into the intricate relationship between humans and the natural world.
After receiving her B.A. in Studio Art at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Teresa moved north to San Francisco, receiving her M.A. from San Francisco State University and her M.F.A. from U. C. Berkeley. Following a period of teaching at San Francisco State University, she ventured north to take a position at Cal Poly Humboldt, where the landscape of the rural North Coast profoundly influenced her work.
Her mixed media paintings and works on paper are created using acrylic, collage, graphite, silkscreen and ink. Her compositions blend elements of memory, concern for the environment and a deep appreciation for the delicate balance between self and nature. Her recent focus on plant life is an exploration of the tension between our artificial connection to the natural world and the harsh realities faces by the ecosystems.
Teresa’s work is currently represented by Bryant Street Gallery in Palo Alto, Blue Gallery in Kansas City and LaFontsee Gallery in Grand Rapids. She has been the recipient of several grants and awards and her work has been features in numerous publications, both in print and on line Her art has garnered national attention and has found its place in diverse art collections, both public and private. Her commitment to the intersection of art and environmental awareness continues to shape her creative endeavors.
Teresa lives and maintains a studio practice in Arcata, California.
Teresa Stanle