Teresa Crowder’s Stories, Lessons & Insights

Teresa Crowder shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Good morning Teresa, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? Are you walking a path—or wandering?
I love this question because I am clearly wandering down a very broad path, and it is the willingness to wander that keeps the walk interesting. It’s like going to a strange city and having the choice of following a map or wandering and choosing between the different paths that open up to you. You never know what you might discover when you ditch the map and open up to what comes. This is how my work feels and it is why I try very hard to follow my own varied instincts in my art and allow myself to constantly experiment with new styles and materials.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I am a self-taught artist and have been painting most of my life. I grew up in Miami back when Miami was still a pretty wild and unspoiled place, so I grew up surrounded by nature — the ocean, the Everglades, mangrove forests, colorful tropical birds, trees, flowers, and plants. These are the things that inform my work to this day. Very few things make me happier than to be out in the wild, a little bit lost, hoping to stumble upon some cool skeleton or an interesting rock or fossil.

I moved to Atlanta to go to school and, after graduating from Emory University with a degree in English, have lived and worked here ever since. I began working mainly in acrylics and watercolors, but quickly began using found objects, as well as materials such as paper and fabric, sticks and rusted metal, in my pieces. When you place a shiny piece of gold paper next to a rusty hunk of chicken wire, a strange alchemy takes place and both are somehow changed. I try very hard not to censor my impulses and not to be afraid to try anything — from developing a new process that seems a little crazy to throwing in a color that seems a bit odd.

During the pandemic in 2020, I began working almost exclusively with a clay process I developed that allows me to sculpt clay on birch board so that it comes alive in relief when hung — sculptural paintings. And now, in 2026, I’m turning back to further developing a process I created and have been working on for many years, using paper, paint, and wax on paper.

I’m not sure where my work will take me from here, but that’s what I love about it — I chose a long time ago not to tie myself to one process or style, so new discoveries and fresh impressions will continue to inspire me and take my work in new directions.

Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What’s a moment that really shaped how you see the world?
When I was 9 or 10 years old, I was friends with a neighbor girl my age and her little brother. Their father was an amateur photographer, and one day he loaded the three of us into his old Toyota and took us to Miami’s Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, one of the most beautiful botanical gardens in the country, if not the world. But on the way, we stopped at the 5 & 10 store, where he bought each of us our own sketch pad and our choice: either crayons or colored pencils. Crayons were for kids, so I chose the colored pencils. When we got there, we spent some time walking around the garden and observing while he took photographs. Then he told us to separate and get to work: Draw anything that inspires you, and draw it with your own special eye, he instructed us. I was completely at a loss — I came from a world of pre-printed coloring books and paint-by-number sets, and certainly no one had ever mentioned that I had my own special eye. It scared me and thrilled me at the same time. I could draw whatever I wanted to draw, in whatever way I wanted to draw it. I didn’t have to stay in the lines because there were no lines. It was my first serious encounter with the terror of the blank canvas and the total freedom to create. I’ve thought about this day and the huge influence it had on me a million times. It changed how I see the world, and the possibility and freedom of my place within it.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
I’m not sure success really teaches you anything, except for the knowledge that success isn’t really the goal. I always feel that the struggle to do anything is where the learning and the real success happens. And surviving the hardship and the struggle, and getting up time and again when you might rather stay down, creates the backbone that the success, if it ever comes, can comfortaby sit astride. If you can’t find the joy in the struggle, then you certainly won’t find it in “success.”

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
I feel like smart people are getting it totally wrong today in our obsessive reliance on technology, to the point that it has become very difficult to distinguish work that’s created by a human being from work that’s created or manipulated by whatever humanity-usurping computer program someone is using. We’re slowly, bit by bit, handing over our creative power and allowing machines to steal the most important ability we have as humans, which is the ability to think independently and to create brilliance out of nothing.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: When do you feel most at peace?
I am most at peace when I’m in my studio with an uninterrupted chunk of time when I can turn off the screens and the phone and just paint. It’s what makes me the happiest and truly gives me a sense of peace and fulfillment that nothing else does. I can relax, try to stop my analytical brain from its tendency toward self-judgment, and let my creative brain take over.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.teresacrowder.com