Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Teresa Stanley. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, Teresa thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawing or making things. From a very early age, I happily entertained myself by making art. I was the “class artist” growing up and as I was lucky enough to live in Los Angeles, I encountered art in museums at an early age. However, I did not know anyone who identified as a professional artist nor did I think that such a thing was possible, particularly for a woman. There were people that I knew who made art as a casual hobby but nothing like the ambitious paintings that I saw in museums and art magazines.
When I became of college age, I told my parents that I wanted to be an art major, an admission that they met with horror! Actually, I had no idea what one could do with an art major and I think I had a vague notion that I could be an illustrator or perhaps a craftsperson. All I knew was that I loved to make things and that I couldn’t think of anything else that would engage me as much as making art did. So, despite my parents misgivings and my own ignorance, I made the plunge.
It was my professors who showed me the way. The minute I took my first painting class and I had my first experience with paint, I knew that this is what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. After a while, I met the artist Ciel Bergman who had been recently hired to teach painting at UCSB. She was the first professional woman artist I had ever met and she painted this large, ambitious, colorful and exciting paintings. She gave me the courage to continue down this path and I’ve never really looked back.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
I was born in Los Angeles, obtained my BA in Studio Art at UC Santa Barbara and then moved north to San Francisco where I obtained a MA in Painting at SF State University and my MFA in Painting at UC Berkeley. A few years after obtaining my MFA, I moved further north to take a position at CalPoly Humboldt, located on the coast of Northern California and where I have remained ever since. I left my teaching position several years ago to concentrate on a full-time studio practice.
The beauty and wildness of the coastal landscape has affected my work profoundly. My most recent work takes its inspiration from the dormant landscape in late autumn and early winter. At that time of year, the color and lushness of the summer foliage slips away, leaving a dry and tangled arrangement of stalks and leaves. Although I miss the long, warm days of spring and summer, I accept the necessity of the changing season and see a sort of quiet and unexpected beauty in the dormant landscape. It seems natural to relate this to an awareness of my own mortality and as a reminder to accept that things come to a natural end. In a larger sense, I apply this same idea to more pressing concerns outside of myself, particularly the fragility of the environment in the face of a shifting climate. I see plants and trees in the landscape as being vulnerable to these shifts while also exhibiting signs of resilience and adaptability. I define my work as “abstract” although there are shapes and forms that come directly from objective reality. I consider myself to be a “narrative” painter as what I make directly connects to events in my life but I express them with the freedom that abstraction brings as it allows me to experiment with materials, form and texture.
Although I have loved the medium of collage since childhood and have used it in a limited way in my work throughout my career, it was only a few years ago during the height of the pandemic, that I began to experiment more fully with its potential. Making hundreds of sheets of hand painted and printed paper and collecting ephemera from a number of sources, I began making paintings that fully embraced the medium. In addition to the cutout pieces of hand-painted collage, I add acrylic paint, colored pencil, ink, monotype and graphite to my work. I do not begin with a plan but figure out my compositions as I work, adding things in and taking things away until I reach a satisfying conclusion. Abstract concerns, coming from my love of formalism, inform the stories that my paintings tell.
Professionally, I have exhibited widely and am currently represented by LaFontsee Gallery in Grand Rapid, Michigan, Blue Gallery in Kansas City and Bryant Street Gallery in Palo Alto. I have been the recipient of several awards, grants and residencies and have had my work featured in a number of print and on-line publications. My work has been collected in a number of public, corporate and private collections.
Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.
I feel that there might be a perception held by non-artists that being an artist is always fun and easy. This was something that I talked about with my students quite a bit while I was a teacher. I used to tell them about a great piece of advice that one of my professors gave me while I was in college. She told me to relax, assuring me that it would take at least ten years of diligent work to make something that was truly good and your own. There is pressure on young artists to get your work out into the world as soon as possible but one’s creative potential doesn’t have an expiration date. Sometimes the work looks good and you can be successful but if you haven’t had enough time to develop, you might just end up repeating yourself or burning out. It is difficult to get to an authentic place within yourself and really know what you want to say, not to mention having the requisite technical chops to say it. Sometimes, your work might look good prematurely but perhaps you are still imitating someone who influenced you. You have to do a lot of thinking, reading and exploration while learning and perfecting your craft, not to mention making a living in order to afford to make the work, and absorbing all that you can about the work and ideas of other artists and thinkers. This takes time and failure is a necessary part of this process. It can be really frustrating and painful to go through this and it is at this point that many people give up! Art is about 10 percent talent and the rest is just resilience and effort.
As a professional artist, my feeling is that it is not always easy to make art but I find at the same time that it is absolutely necessary to make it. There are a lot of additional things that you need to deal with as a professional artist besides making your work. There are social media obligations, packing and shipping your work, taxes, correspondence with galleries, website updates, updating your inventory, searching out new opportunities, applying to grants and residencies and other opportunities, keeping up with the contemporary art world, studio maintenance and upkeep. It is more than a full-time job!
What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?
I can’t understand how anyone could ever be bored – the word does not exist in my vocabulary. Since childhood, art has been an engrossing activity for me. I refer to something called “studio time” which is a strange time warp you enter where 8 hours seems like 2. I love the intensity of the making of my work, the constant evaluative process you go through as you are making it, the surprises it give you. I love being grounded in a practice that I see from start to conclusion. I don’t care what you make, whether it is beautiful cakes, knitted sweaters, fine woodworking, restoring vintage cars, writing music or fiction, making a beautiful garden or painting, all of it is about “making” and it is a very important and fundamental activity for humans to engage with. It’s an obsession and devotion that gives your life meaning and direction and I feel very grateful that I have been able to spend my life doing it.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.teresastanley.art
- Instagram: teresastanleyart
- Facebook: teresastanleyart
Image Credits
All images by Teresa Stanley.