Terese Garcia

Stretching, opening the heart, using other, new mixed media materials and growing patience, as a scar or wound lets go and falls off over time. The common thread of these real descriptions mentioned above for the “Find Found Series, 2024 is mindful experimentation. It is also about shedding past scars of self-hate and allowing self-love to enter....

This is my mixed media breakthrough series. Up until this point, I was making paintings or hybrids, without the direct focus you’ll witness here. This change happened because my process of mixing, integrating, prepping and refining materials became the art form, no longer standing on the sidelines. The process as the primary source was meant to be. The underlay was a lot of happy accidents and hard mistakes like a light, rather than darkness....

These pieces speak to my need to create art with human made debris, once it’s no longer usable, especially plastic. We see an astronomical amount of plastic trash in our oceans, earth and air that according to scientific studies is harming us and our planet. Plastic is chemically toxic. The nameless and named companies making this product are selling it to us and we’re consuming it, throwing it away or trying to recycle it....

This series beckons the aliveness of layering paint on paint like the night is to the day, one universe is to the particle. The layers matter and there wouldn't be the palette’s forms, lines and movement or non movement without this process. No preconceived ideas of how to arrive at the finished piece were made. They are in a sense, the weight of a blindness or innocence that is more connected to what I needed to express than outward appearances or thoughts.....

In this Series, I explored improvisational techniques that became critical to all my work since. None of these techniques are new. Nonetheless, my layering approach is a style that I consider my own. I began with layering paint, sand and dirt and sometimes adhered paper or fabric. At one point in my earlier adulthood, I took stone carving sculpture with a wonderful Art Teacher and Master of stone carving, Sonya Kraft. She once told me.....

This Series talks about newness, timelessness, and openness to anything. They are done on archival paper and much like my other work, the palettes, forms and markings and techniques are experimental and layered. Because they’re smaller in size, they are more intimate that give a certain aesthetic that is truly known and experienced seen live. My body and mind had to be completely aware in this process....

This Series is based on how color and line coexist purely through their energy. One doesn’t often think about color or line like this. But for me, they are energies not to be taken for granted. The process was innovative because I had not honored the abstractness in color quite like this....