Artist Statement

I paint psychological landscapes built from pieces of the broken world around me. Recurring themes in my work include houses, gardens, and portals to other places and times. I grew up moving from place to place and never felt rooted anywhere. From this experience, I developed an obsession with “home,” especially of the homes I didn’t have. I daydreamed of places I wanted to live, drawing fantasy floor plans and illustrations. In my paintings, those imagined spaces began to merge with the real ones I’d experienced, creating a personal world that exists outside of any specific time or location.

At the heart of this is my need to make art as an antidote to the modern world. I am seeking some sort of calm or sanctuary in my painting—something like a utopian ideal. However, painting also helps me process my anxiety about living in a world that is creeping closer to dystopia —sometimes the darkness creeps in as an undercurrent of my escapism. Each piece is part sanctuary, part warning, since my worlds are all constructed in the shadow of the current times. Gardens, furniture, familiar architecture, and symbols of comfort coexist with the broader world’s uncertainties. The shifting abstract architectures hint at instability and at my feeling of existing in multiple places at once. But none of the structures actually give shelter, which is always out of reach.

Making a painting is an immersive step into my imagination, and that process is what brings me the most satisfaction. Each painting is a place of my own creation, woven from memory, longing, and unease. Transforming fragments of my past into new, imagined spaces gives me a sense of control and turns a lived experience of constant change into something tangible and steady. I hope each finished painting becomes a kind of contemplative experience for the viewer as well, offering a space to wonder, reflect, and escape.

Artist Bio

Bekka Teerlink has a BA from Brandeis University in Studio Fine Arts Painting with a minor in Creative Writing Poetry and an MFA in Cinema-Television Production/Cinematography from the University of Southern California. She currently lives in Medford MA, and has a studio at Vernon Street Studios in Somerville, MA, and works at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design.

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