This vibrant abstract floral oil painting by Teodora Guererra was created as part of a 2019 series exploring the expressive energy of flowers, landscape, and color. Measuring 48 x 48 x 1.75 inches, the work is painted in oil on canvas and is wired and ready to hang.
In this piece, Guererra moves between abstraction and suggestion, allowing washes of blue, lavender, green, and soft white to unfold like a garden caught in shifting light. Gestural brushwork, layered color, and loose floral forms create a sense of movement and atmosphere, while small accents of orange and deeper blue bring warmth and rhythm to the composition. The painting feels both lush and airy, evoking the sensation of standing within a blooming landscape rather than looking directly at one.
This floral series represents a more color-forward and organic direction within Guererra’s broader abstract practice. Known for her richly textured surfaces, intuitive mark-making, and emotional use of color, Guererra has recently expressed interest in revisiting these abstracted florals, drawn again to their vibrancy, immediacy, and joyful palette. The work offers a beautiful connection between her earlier explorations of saturated color and her ongoing interest in nature, memory, gesture, and atmosphere.
Guererra’s abstract works are deeply shaped by her travels across the United States and abroad. Her time living in Arizona inspired a love of radiant landscapes and bold color, while the changing seasons of the East Coast influenced her gestural, layered, and textural approach to painting. Throughout her career, she has drawn inspiration from artists including Joan Mitchell, Pat Steir, Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Poons, and Morris Louis.
In her most recent series, Guererra continues to explore the emotional resonance of texture and color. Working in thick impasto, she creates meditative compositions that evoke nature’s quiet power. Love Letter, with its layered whites and soft undertones, captures fleeting moments and the whisper of memory, while Layered builds a grounded intensity through tonal bands of blue and grey—suggestive of seascapes or shifting skies. These works reflect her ongoing commitment to material experimentation and an intuitive response to light, movement, and atmosphere.
Throughout her career, Guererra has drawn inspiration from artists such as Pat Steir, Joan Mitchell, Larry Poons, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis. She holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Art from Southern Connecticut State University, The College of Saint Rose, and Skidmore College. Her paintings are part of numerous public and private collections across the U.S., including the Allmen Health and Wellness Center for Women in New York, SUNY Brockport, and Williams-Sonoma in San Francisco.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
My work is rooted in the physical act of painting. Using palette knives, brushes and thick paint, I build dense, textured surfaces that are as much about the process as the composition. The work allows me to express what is felt rather than seen - gesture becomes language, and layers become memory.
Place deeply informs my work. Living in the expansive desert landscapes of Arizona, I first began experimenting with bold color and saturated light. Later, on the East Coast, I became captivated by the atmospheric shifts of the seasons and developed a more layered, emotive approach. My recent paintings are shaped by these contrasting environments—quiet but tactile, restrained yet expressive.
In pieces like Love Letter and Layered, I explore the subtle tension between control and release. Thick impasto and tonal gradients suggest moments of stillness, memory, or transition. These works are not meant to represent specific places or moments, but rather to evoke a sense of presence—of standing still inside a feeling.
I am influenced by artists who pushed the limits of abstraction and process: Joan Mitchell, Pat Steir, Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis among them. Like them, I am continually experimenting—searching for new ways to capture what is intangible through surface, gesture, and the language of paint.
About Sorelle Gallery:
Sorelle Gallery is a woman-owned fine art gallery and art advisory firm located in Westport, Connecticut. Representing nearly fifty artists, Sorelle carries a wide variety of art styles from modern abstract to impressionistic landscapes, and more. Sorelle's mission is to not only support the emerging and established artists they represent, but to help clients curate their own spaces, invest confidently, and buy what they love.
