About Teodora Guererra
Biography
Teodora Guererra’s abstract works are deeply shaped by her travels across the United States and abroad. Her time living in Arizona sparked a love for the region’s radiant landscape and arid climate, inspiring her to explore vibrant color palettes and richly layered underpainting. Later, the shifting seasons of the East Coast influenced her to develop gestural, textural techniques—most notably her signature dripping and palette knife applications.
In her most recent series, Guererra continues to explore the emotional resonance of texture and color. Working in thick impasto, she creates meditative compositions that evoke nature’s quiet power. Love Letter, with its layered whites and soft undertones, captures fleeting moments and the whisper of memory, while Layered builds a grounded intensity through tonal bands of blue and grey—suggestive of seascapes or shifting skies. These works reflect her ongoing commitment to material experimentation and an intuitive response to light, movement, and atmosphere.
Throughout her career, Guererra has drawn inspiration from artists such as Pat Steir, Joan Mitchell, Larry Poons, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Art from Southern Connecticut State University, The College of Saint Rose, and Skidmore College. Her paintings are part of numerous public and private collections across the U.S., including the Allmen Health and Wellness Center for Women in New York, SUNY Brockport, and Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco.
Artist Statement
My work is rooted in the physical act of painting. Using palette knives and thick paint, I build dense, textured surfaces that are as much about the process as the image. I’m drawn to abstraction because it allows me to express what is felt rather than seen - gesture becomes language, and layers become memory.
Place deeply informs my work. Living in the expansive desert landscapes of Arizona, I first began experimenting with bold color and saturated light. Later, on the East Coast, I became captivated by the atmospheric shifts of the seasons and developed a more layered, emotive approach. My recent paintings are shaped by these contrasting environments—quiet but tactile, restrained yet expressive.
In pieces like Love Letter and Layered, I explore the subtle tension between control and release. Thick impasto and tonal gradients suggest moments of stillness, memory, or transition. These works are not meant to represent specific places or moments, but rather to evoke a sense of presence—of standing still inside a feeling.
I am influenced by artists who pushed the limits of abstraction and process: Joan Mitchell, Pat Steir, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis among them. Like them, I am continually experimenting—searching for new ways to capture what is intangible through surface, gesture, and the language of paint.
