Teresa Cerda was born in Santiago, Chile and moved to Madrid, Spain in 1990. In 2005 her family made the move to Boone when her husband accepted a professorship at Appalachian. She holds a degree in Stage Design for Theater and Cinema from the Instituto Madrileño de Formación y Empleo in Madrid. From 1994 until 2000 she served as the director of the Framing and Decoration Workshops at Fundacion de Artes y Autores Contemporaneos. She left this position to establish her own painting and framing studio in Madrid, and in addition to her own studio work, she collaborated with numerous institutions in mounting and caring for exhibitions.
The artist has found inspiration in her various surroundings from the cities of the world such as Madrid, Berlin, Barcelona, and New York to the natural world surrounding her including the desolate landscape of Castile and the winter of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She employs a range of materials like pigment, metal leaf, gesso, and wax to imbue her surfaces with texture and color while exploring abstract and geometrical compositions.
Teresa Cerda, City Series. Encaustic. Photo credit: Cassie McDowell.