My work is inspired by the landscape in late autumn and early winter. At that time of year, the color and lushness of the summer foliage slowly slips away, leaving a dry and chaotic arrangement of stalks, bare branches and leaves. I see a sort of quiet beauty in the decay that accompanies the dormant landscape that I can easily relate to my awareness of my own mortality as well as to the fragility of the environment in the face of a shifting climate. In my most recent work, the landscapes I paint are surrounded by empty buildings, flooded lakes, abandoned bridges and freeways that highlight the contrast between wild spaces and those populated by the manmade structures of an earlier age.

The paintings are made with acrylic paint, hand colored collage paper, monotype, ink, graphite and colored pencil on canvas and birch panel. The painting are coated with several layers of matte gel medium and finished with a matte UV varnish.

Born in Los Angeles, Teresa Stanley received a BA from UC Santa Barbara and a MFA from U.C. Berkeley. She has exhibited widely and her work can be found in many private and corporate collections. She is currently represented by LaFontsee Gallery in Grand Rapids, Michigan and Bryant Street Gallery in Palo Alto . She has been the recipient of several awards, grants and residencies and has had her work featured in many print and online publications. After a long career teaching painting at Cal Poly Humboldt, she retired in 2021 in order to work full-time out of her studio in Northern California.