TERUKO WILDE
Secret Places
Born in Japan, Teruko Wilde went to school at University of Cincinnati and Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio. There, she recalls, she worked in pastels and watercolor primarily in subdued grays and blues. In 1986 she moved to Taos, New Mexico, and discovered color. “Color is part of me after more than 30 years here,” she says. “Not intentionally,” she adds. “It’s a natural extension of my personality.”
She calls herself a “country girl” who grew up in the foothills of the mountains near her home in Nagoya and fell in love with Taos Mountain when she moved to New Mexico. She lives in one of the unique Earthships—passive solar homes built with recycled materials—outside of Taos. “I can never get away from nature,” she says, happily.
Her collectors comment on their enjoyment of collecting her work over the years as her style has changed and become more and more abstract. Her feeling for
the vitality of color carries over from her earlier, more tightly painted, landscapes. Her latest work is created with “a spatula from the department store,” the strokes of color recalling the graphic quality of calligraphy. Although she initially insisted that the paintings have nothing to do with calligraphy, she then began to ponder if, perhaps, it was part of her Japanese heritage manifesting in the new work.
These new pieces will be shown in the exhibition The search for that secret place at Total Arts Gallery in Taos, July 13 through August 5. “I’m not satisfied doing the same thing over and over,” she says. “I’m not working for technical perfection, although that, too, is searching. I want to continue to find excitement. I think the ‘secret place’ is a mystery. You never know what happens in a search.”
Total Arts Gallery 122 Kit Carson Road • Taos, NM 87571 • (575) 758-4667 • www.totalartsgallery.com
“We have loved collecting many of [Teruko Wilde’s] paintings over the years as she transitions to a more and now completely abstract style. We like to hang earlier pieces side by side with later, more abstract pieces.”
— Charles and Linda Chauvin, collectors