TERESA STANLEY | ABOUT 

Our inventory fluctuates – please contact the gallery for current works.

Artist Statement

The paintings in this exhibit are from a series that I call Reservoir. I completed these paintings over the past year in what was a very focused and productive time for me. Many calamitous and unsettling world events took place during this period, a time also marked by heavy rains that brought about the end of a long and severe drought. Water, life sustaining and reflective, is also capable of great turbulence and destruction. Thus it became an apt metaphor for me as I attempted to puzzle through these paintings.

As I worked, I began to construct in my mind an imagined environment that contained structures to direct, collect, contain, extract, traverse and conduct water. Taking the form of blueprints, pipes, bridges, escarpments and towers, the images that emerged seem to be constructed resourcefully and logically from random scraps and remnants of my consciousness; instructions, thoughts, memories and historical evidence. The structures are both bulwarks and conduits that help to navigate the complexity of experience.

My work is abstract but I am guided by a strong narrative impulse. My process is intuitive and I prefer to puzzle out the painting through the process of making rather than starting with a concrete plan or image. My work courts uncertainty and chaos while also desiring control, analysis and rationality. I am drawn to the natural world but feel a strong affinity for architectural spaces. My paintings are humorous but come from a sincere and heartfelt place. I feel comfortable working within these contradictions.

Random events, people and objects informed this series. The national political drama, my late father’s electronic schematic drawings, the music of Alice Coltrane, the photographs of Bernd and Hila Bechter, the color in Matisse’s paintings and my interactions with the natural world, including my daily walks with my dog at the marsh near my home. I take it all in and let it wash over me in all its wonderful confusion.