Artist Spotlight
We sat down over Chamomile tea and tacos. She is diminutive in stature, which surprised me. Her art is so large, so vibrant, and so encompassing that I did not imagine a shock of blond hair and a kind, warm face that would be completely hidden behind the camera.
She has an artist’s flare. A confidence in her stride. A brightness of her eye as they dart around, glimpsing every detail around her, staging the area for a photo shoot.
And the ambiance of the upscale, Latin-fusion bar gives plenty of matter to consider artistically; men and women posed awkwardly, making small talk, covering the obvious cracks in their own flawed relationships with clothes, booze, and banter.
It was like a metaphor for her works; she is a realist who blends the natural into a sublime and occasionally absurd, but always gorgeously colorful and real, into evocative photos that draw the eye and bend the mind.
Her commitment all-encompassing. While she is best known as a photographer, Teresa Flowers is a bundle of inspired talent that reaches from modeling to painting to fashion and styling. She started her endeavors in elementary school, drawing her classmates. In 4th grade, she confesses, really had one approach. “I drew everyone like they were from ‘I Dream of Jeanine.’ Every girl was coming out of a bottle. With a ponytail on top of her head, and every boy had huge muscles.” To her surprise, the kids loved the drawings. “They would tape the drawings to their desks.” She loved the recognition.
“I really had my first art show in my classroom.”
Her parents, both artists, saw a natural talent and enrolled her in private lessons. What grew from that early education was an eye for realism. When she was 17, she staged her first photoshoot with her 15-year-old sister. Dressed as an angel, with stars on her face, and her hair curled, in a room draped with white sheets, she applied the realism of her drawing to the camera, the magic of drawing with light and shadow.
And that was when she became invested in photography.
That experience led her to the darkroom and how she fell in love with the craft and the artistry of photography. One of her first photos was a long exposure of her mother where she imposed her face on her mother’s body, and people called it haunting. What she didn’t tell anyone was that her mom was dying of AIDS and because of the stigma, the only way she could process her emotions was through her creativity, her craft, and her lens. And while her art was a brilliant tool to deal with her own emotional trauma, it also left her vulnerable. She realized at that moment that her art was a way for people to see her, her secrets, and her pain. But also her strength and triumph.
She met this realization with the burst of newfound love and realized just how scary being completely vulnerable could be for an artist. And that is the artist’s existence. “I now have a voice. I have a purpose. Oh, no, people are going to know me and see me.”
This was the ’90s, and Nikon 6006 was her first camera. And film wasn’t a thing. It was the thing. She upgraded to a Hasselblad camera which became her steady companion for many years. She sold it to pay rent in Los Angeles. And that was one of the great initial sacrifices as an artist. To Flowers, to create is not an easy title. “There are a lot of people who know how to push a button on a camera. But they have never been in a dark room; they don’t know how to use film. They don’t know how to use their camera,” she tells me as she sips her tea. “Those people aren’t artists. They are image capturers.”
I ask her when she knew she was an artist. She smiled and said simply, “Don’t call yourself an artist. Let other people call you an artist. And you’ll know when you are ready to an artist.”
She is an artist through and through. She has spent her whole life being an artist. She has dedicated her life to it. She has sacrificed everything, every material comfort that other people take for granted for her art. And that shows in the beauty of her creations.
Do you feel like you need validation for your art? Or is it its own reward?
She laughs. “You can always use the validation.”
She knows she is great. She knows her work is amazing. But feeling that other people don’t care, as if she has laid her soul bare and no one notices, leaves her feeling exposed. But this vulnerability is the key to her vision. Her creations are about exposing the sensual and raw nature of the subjects and the themes.
I ask her how she manages to stay positive and keep driving her art forward, and she only taps her teacup and says, “It is pointless at times, and then people show up at the right time, and when you need it, and they inspire you.”
She tells me the sacrifice for her art has taught that she is the purpose. “It is hard for creative [people] to give everything to everything else,” she says, referring obliquely to jobs, or people, or even other people’s projects, “and leaving nothing for you to be creative and creating your own purpose.”
Now, she has a purpose. Everything she does is purposeful. It helps her evolve and grow. Her purpose is to be herself, regardless of what she does. She has learned to give up a little on perfection by giving up a little control.
“Perfection can hold you back.”
Follow Teresa Flowers
Do you enjoy this kind of thoughtful and irreverent kind of writing? Subscribe to The Marais Review and never miss a thing.