Teresa Getty

Each painting has a story that begins with an everyday experience, a current event, an experience shared with my daughter, or simply a looking and seeing moment. While I work, memories surface. The work walks itself back into the past: memories, some peaceful, some dark. Without censorship, I allow them to flow into my mark, into my responses of lines and color.

At first I work slowly, mimicking life; carefully, beginning the foundation of a journey with an end I cannot yet perceive. I respond to that impulse – sometimes with a large brush, a sweeping mark and at other times, very tiny determined lines. I refer often to architecture and biology in a way to curb my too free impulses, to provide structure and to create a recognizable or enterable world.

I engage the work spontaneously, often with aggressive cuts and extraction. Then, like someone ashamed at an outburst, I bury things by pouring material over them; I sand the work. In the process, hidden things resurface, revealing a visual mixture of the veiled past and the surface which I see as the present. This creates an archeology beyond my anticipation.

This archeology is the link I seek to have a conversation with my viewer. The layers of my personal journey, the pr...

EDUCATION: M.F.A. 2007 Painting University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.A. 2006 Painting University of Wisconsin-Madison
B.F.A. 2004 Painting The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
B.A. 1997 Studio Art-Major, Biology-Minor (summa cum laude), Northeastern Illinois University

2022

Len Belinger and Teresa Getty, Micheal David & CO, Brooklyn, NY (upcoming)

2019

Object Traces: Getty/Greenberg, Rare Nest Gallery, Chicago, IL

The bluejay and the spine, we had a teapot on the side, Arts Visalia, Visalia, CA

2018

here (in collaboration with Jeremy Wineberg), Method Gallery, Seattle, WA

2017

Reminders of memories that I don't have, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago, IL

Seattle in Review, Two Birds Tattoo, Seattle WA

Findings: Imagined and Real, Gallery 4500, Seattle, WA

2016

Abstract : Teresa Getty and Helen Callici, Apex Aerial Arts, Seattle WA

2014

Pink Flight Suit, Thomas Masters Gallery, Chicago, IL

Stolen Lines, Kipp Gallery, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Indiana, PA