((L-R) Here Comes Santa Claus, oil on panel; Stephen Teater; Birds of a Feather, oil on canvas)

I grew up here, in Bend. I’ve traveled to many far-off places that, when I was a kid, seemed to only exist in fairytales. I’m from a time when information about anything wasn’t all kept in a back pocket, when imagination, inference and wonder filled in the gaps of what could be learned at the library or from our set of encyclopedias, when we needed to go to Portland to get trendy clothes.

Very early on, my Grandma Tommie noted how well I colored within the lines, and she’d always tell me that. One summer Saturday (I was probably nine), I spent the day at her house. We made chocolate-peach-banana milkshakes and she wanted me to draw my colored-pencil version of a painting of Jesus she had hanging prominently above the television in her living room. By the afternoon, I wasn’t very proud of my drawing, but Grandma Tommie seemed pleased.

My folks have a pencil drawing I did of an old truck hanging in their hallway, it won a ribbon at the fair. Grandma Tommie framed and proudly displayed it, and showed it off to her friends. I was never very pleased with it, because it wasn’t my idea really, but from a book about doing pencil drawings.

I don’t see my work as others do, and my paintings aren’t finished when they’re “perfect,” but when I enjoy their imperfections so much that I can’t bear to cover them up. The beauty of painting is in the undone — places where imagination, inference and wonder can play and dream, relate and ponder, delight and remember. Art simultaneously communicates truths about our shared humanity and reflects truths about our unique individualities, and when I believe my work does that, it’s complete.

Decades after drawing that old truck, I worried and labored over a portrait of Grandma Tommie. Her health declining, I felt an urgency to demonstrate that I made good use of her faith and encouragement. I painted and repainted her portrait over several weeks, four or five times, until even I was pleased with it: a testament to my love and gratitude and of her significance.

In her familiar living room, now kept darker, the television louder, proudly I gave her the painting. She studied it silently and I waited expectantly for some moments. Finally she asked, “What is that mark, there on my cheek?” “That’s a shadow, Grandma,” I replied. “It looks like catsup,” she said. And I hung it above the television.

For purchases, commissions, art lessons, inquiries and advice, email: stephenteater@gmail.com

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