TERRY TEITELBAUM ABSTRACT IMPRESSIONIST Interview by Harryet Candee
Harryet Candee: You have made an outstanding career in the fashion/textile design world. I am interested in what grabbed you the most about it and what your profession in this field focused on through the years? Terry Teitelbaum: As a fashion designer, starting in the 60s, I was surrounded by fabrics exploding with color. This time period of psychedelic colors and tie-dyed fabrics was a huge influence on me as a designer, and now as an artist. Art was bold, music went electric and fashion was dictated by my generation. Although I originally designed children’s clothing, life took me in a new direction. I left Manhattan for upstate New York. I eventually started working at Bennington College in the theater department creating costumes with the students for the dance and drama productions. We created some outlandish and wild looking costumes. I got great satisfaction using my imagination and skills as a pattern maker. 40 • OCTOBER 2021 THE ARTFUL MIND
Photographs courtesy of Artist
Attention was paid to the overall effect the costumes had on the stage set. In fact, they were an integral part of the stage design. I did this for over 20 years while also running my custom decorating studio. Use of fabrics in both cases immersed me in color and texture with thousands of yards of textiles. I simply traded one art form for another. Noting your fluid, uncontrived brush strokes, catching the continuous flow of what nature offers, capturing the subtleties in layers working with an endless palette of color, all this and more, I wonder how much of your skilled techniques working with textiles emerged, appearing in your paintings? Just like a house needs a good foundation, all artists acquire a skill set during their careers. The years of playing with the texture and color of textiles provided me with a rich library of images to transpose onto a painting surface. Mem-
ory of the textures, the weaves, the sheerness, and the opaqueness are still vivid to me. The easiest way for me to explain it is that these images of color and texture form the composition of my work showing up in the layers. The reconnection of layers of fabric with folds draping off a mannequin are visible to me in the clouds, the hills, and the water that I paint. Some people say they see fabric in my artwork. “I see woven colors in the leaves” How would you suggest the best way for an artist to begin incorporating color into their art in a comfortable way? I generally start out with an underpainting. Then I start applying layers of color as my painting develops. It just builds from there, one color working off all the others. I believe my color palette is different from most artists who strive for color sensitivity and harmony. My palette is experimental in nature. My art is impression-
