Anna Teiche

BIO

Anna Teiche is an oil painter and drawer based in Austin, Texas. She received her BFA from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and holds an MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. She has exhibited nationally, most recently at the Visual Arts Center (TX), and Unsmoked Systems (PA). In 2020, her first solo show opened at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art (WA). She has attended residencies including NES (Iceland), Rockland Woods (WA), Kintai Arts (Lithuania), and Vermont Studio Center.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Working in large scale oil and gouache painting, my work has grown out of recent experience as a caretaker for my partner while he underwent successful cancer treatment. During this time I began drawing parallels between the effects of illness and treatment on the body with the cyclical patterns of death and birth in ecosystems. My work mirrors the personal emotional and bodily experiences of caretaking; and the connections to nature that I found during this time. Canvases become covered with two foot wide brush marks, tracking the stress and movement of my body as it moves across the surface, the buildup of brushstrokes sometimes frantic, other times methodical, aligned with the drastic shifts in attention I felt during this time. Alternative mark-making tools and processes like wire and sand shift the properties and application of paint on canvas, each work hovering between emotional abstraction, figuration, and identifiable horizon lines. Through this exploration is an interest in an emotional space — an invitation to reflect on the interconnectedness of ourselves and the earth.

Interview with Anna Teiche

Can you tell us a bit about your background and how you became interested in becoming an artist?

I’ve always felt drawn to being an artist. It took me a long time to realize that I could make a career out of artmaking, as I didn’t grow up around any artists, and all the art I saw and studied was historical. While I was in my undergrad I was studying graphic design, and slowly began making all the projects by hand. I remember we had an assignment to make a book that communicated the feeling of a song by playing with the typography of the song’s lyrics, and I ended up embroidering the whole thing. I enjoyed the actual making of things by hand so much, but was always getting annoyed at the assignment guidelines, so I ended up switching to art and became interested in painting.

Can you tell us about some of your most memorable early influences?

I’ve always felt drawn to textiles. As a child I was interested in sewing and embroidery, and as I developed my painting practice, my earlier work focused on patterning and fabrics. I think a lot of the movement and structure of fabrics, how they fold, the color palettes, and the repetition of mark still inform my work now, though it’s in a looser, more abstract way.

Where are you currently based and what brought you there? Are there any aspects of this specific location or community that have inspired your work?

I currently work in Austin, TX. I originally moved here from Seattle for graduate school at UT Austin, and have stayed in the area since graduating with my MFA. Having grown up rurally in the forests of Washington, Texas is a completely different environment; one I have learned to appreciate and let into my work. Since moving here, the focus of my work has shifted into a more experimental painting approach, due both to the new community I’ve been working in, and to the large, sweeping landscapes and rock formations found in the area, that have given visual specificity to the abstract spaces, colors, and compositions of my recent work.

What is your studio space like? What makes your space unique to you?

I currently work in a small spare room in my home. This is my first time having a home studio, and I feel incredibly lucky to be able to go in and out of the studio at any time of day. It is sometimes a little comical to step in there and see each wall completely covered by canvases – I feel drawn to working as large as my walls will allow for. There is something that’s equal parts cozy and claustrophobic about being completely surrounded by my work, sometimes with no blank wall space in sight, but I’m learning to embrace it.

What is a typical day like? If you don't have a typical day, what is an ideal day?

I’m currently an educator as well as an artist, so many days I’m teaching part of the day, and painting for the rest of it. On my days off, I try to get into the studio as early as possible, I love working first thing in the morning and then going on into my day with painting on my mind.

What gets you in a creative groove or flow? Is there anything that interrupts your creative energy?

In an ideal world, having the perfect balance of structured studio time, and a lack of schedule put me in the best creative flow. Having long uninterrupted time periods feels necessary to allow my brain to get in the right flow, so on studio days I do my best to avoid scheduling other appointments etc. While this doesn’t always happen, on another level, I think just jumping into a piece without too much planning often ends up as more successful pieces – allowing myself to work more intuitively in terms of color and movement, rather than having a specific plan to follow, that often makes me over-think and argue with the piece, rather than allowing it to develop more intuitively.

How do you maintain momentum in your practice?

Working, always. Even when I feel stuck and unmotivated, just walking in my studio and looking at what’s on the wall. I often spend time working in gouache and pastel when I feel most stuck, the quick, chance-based mark making allows me to give up some of the control and intense decision making my oil painting process requires, and just let the materials speak to me.

What medium/media are you working in right now? What draws you to this particular material or method?

I work mainly in oils, gouache, and pastel. Since taking my first painting class years ago during my undergrad, I’ve felt drawn to the medium and its history. I enjoy the process of continually discovering new artists and painters, and always pushing the technical aspects of paint through adding different substances like sand and stone particles, and using strange tools to apply it. On some level I think I enjoy making the material itself more “challenging” to work with – through changing its texture, thickness, or the tool I apply it with, as a way of continuing to experiment and push the surface of the paintings. Recently, while working on the painting “Down the Line” I was curious what it would feel like to cover such a large canvas with just a few brush marks, so I build a two-foot brush to see what make such large marks would feel like, and how they would affect the feel of the painting. I found that it became more of a bodily experience, the pressure and tension in my body felt like it was being mapped onto the canvas.

Can you walk us through your overall process in making your current work? Does drawing play a role in your process?

I will often start with found or personal photos, mainly looking at the composition or sense of light in a photo. From there, I often create a series of quick gouache and pastel studies, which allow me to play with the composition, color palette, marks, movement, and other factors in a more low-stakes method than oil painting allows for. From there, I begin full paintings. I like to repeat a composition on a couple different scales, often working on smaller and larger canvases simultaneously to see how the scale can shift the emotional content or feel of the work. From there each painting becomes it’s own. Much of my painting process is responsive – I’m always making a mark, stepping back, considering, and repeating with each new mark; often straying from the original intention or vision.

What is exciting about your process currently?

I’m at a moment where I feel I’m exploring some new directions in my work. At some times this gives me anxiety, the feeling that my work isn’t always fitting visually into some kind of linear progression, but most days, I enjoy employing different painting techniques, allowing imagery to come in and out of my work, and allowing each piece to develop as it needs. I try to resist pressure to make sure all my work “looks” a certain way or fits together too specifically and have instead found that allowing each work to develop independently often ends up with a more interesting collection of pieces when grouped together. Each painting certainly influences the next, but often in subconscious ways.

Can you talk about some of the ongoing interests, imagery, and concepts that have informed your process and body of work over time? How do you anticipate your work progressing in the future?

At the moment I’m actually inviting patterning back into my practice. Earlier in my work I pulled a lot of influence from textiles and patterns, and how pattern design often mimicked nature or natural elements through different stylistic eras. While I still see the influence in my more recent work, it’s a much looser, abstract connection. In my studio these days I’m playing with allowing some of the more specific patterning back into my work.

Do you pursue any collaborations, projects, or careers in addition to your studio practice? If so, can you tell us more about those projects, and are there connections between your studio practice and these endeavors?

I’m an educator, and currently teach adjunct at a university. I’m still fairly new to teaching, and enjoy working with students to develop their own artistic interests and voices. I feel like I learn so much watching how other people paint, and helping other’s follow their interests and goals keep me open-minded about my own work and process. That said, it’s definitely been a shift, and has taken a lot of practice to make sure I’m preserving energy for my own work.

Have you had any epiphanies recently that have changed the course of your work or caused you to shift directions?

In 2021, my partner was diagnosed with cancer. This experience drastically shifted both the focus of my work, as well as my painting process. He luckily made a fairly quick recovery, and we are approaching his two year cancer-free anniversary. During his illness, I lost a lot of patience and mental focus for my work. At the time I was making these really detailed pattern paintings, using incredibly tiny brushes to build up a whole painting. I always enjoyed the meditative and repetitive process of painting patterns, but at the time I felt like I needed a process that forced a more intensive focus from me – having time to let my mind wander while I repetitively painting marks only fed my anxiety. I quickly started building big brushes, pouring thin layers of paint, and working in much quicker processes to build up a painting, and stopped planning them out beforehand. That time in my life forced me to leave behind a lot of habits I had developed that didn’t necessarily excite me I my process, but that I had become so used to that I rarely thought about. I began trying to create painting using only processes and approaches that really excited me, and kept me engaged in the work, otherwise I would lose focus and my mind would wander towards the stressful events happening in the rest of my life. Many of the paintings that came from this time are included here, and as things have settled down, I’ve began to find connections between my older, more meditative way of working, and this new process I developed.

Can you share some of your recent influences? Are there specific works—from visual art, literature, film, or music—that are important to you?

I often listen to audiobooks while I paint. Recently some that have been staying with me, and working their way into my practice are Afterglow by Eileen Miles, and How Should a Person Be by Sheila Heti.

Who are some contemporary artists you’re excited about? What are the best exhibitions you’ve seen in recent memory and why do they stand out?

I’ve been looking at Karin Mamma Andersson quite a bit lately, as well as Tomory Dodge and Sky Glabush. I recently saw the Matthew Wong show at the Dallas Museum of Art, it was stunning to see his work contextualized through his career and life. And the works themselves are such fantastic and emotional works. I appreciated that they found a balance between contextualizing his own, somewhat unique entrance into painting and the art world, his mental health struggles, and still allowed his work to stand on its own.

Do you have any tips or advice that someone has shared with you that you have found particularly helpful?

Being in grad school taught me to always be working, and specifically, to find outlets to work or get ideas out quickly if I don’t have hours to spend in the studio that day.

Also, take care of your body: exercise, eat well, all that cliché stuff. Since spending a lot of time around doctors at appointments with my partner, I’ve developed a new appreciation and understanding of how big of a difference that staying healthy can make. Partially, exercise helps me to get the energy to work in the studio, and finding active hobbies has become a way of getting my mind off my work, especially if I’m feeling stuck, so that I can come back to it with fresh energy and focus.

What are you working on in the studio right now? What’s coming up next for you?

I’m currently in the early planning stages of an artist book that explores my experiences as caretaker for my partner while he underwent cancer treatment. The artist book as a format is something I’ve worked with more casually when I was younger, and that I’m interested in returning to, as a way of combining written and visual works I’ve compiled since that time in my life. It’s been a helpful outlet to reflect on how those experiences shifted my practice, and to experiment with ways of writing and talking about it as a wider context to my work and process.

To find out more about Anna Teiche check out her Instagram and website.