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more about Teodora
“Art helps me find my way back to myself, again
and again.”
Teodora is a Dutch painter, born in the spring of 1992 in the former Yugoslavia, into an artistic family. Her mother is a musician and her father a painter. Later that year, when war broke out, her parents fled to the Netherlands with her as a baby, where the family rebuilt their creative life.
From an early age, Teodora felt a strong need to create worlds of her own. As a child, she would build small worlds from everything around her, giving each object its own place and meaning. Creativity was always a part of her life, but her path back to art took many years. After working as a graphic designer for ten years, the lockdown in 2020 created space for her to rediscover where her creativity could take her.
It began with a small vase that had been in her family home for years. One morning, while drinking her coffee, she noticed the vase with a freshly picked flower. She took it with her, along with a stone, and began to sketch. When the drawing was finished, she wanted to explore the image in colour as well, without really knowing how. Her father taught her the basics of painting, after which she continued to develop herself as a self-taught artist. She discovered that she could do something she had never tried before.
Around the same time, she met her partner in Italy. The encounter and the new life that followed gradually changed the direction of both her life and her work. At the end of 2022, she left her career as a graphic designer behind, and in 2023 she decided to dedicate herself fully to art. Making the transition to painting also meant learning to trust the unknown. That belief continues to play an important role in both her life and her work.
Teodora works exclusively with still life. She is naturally drawn to the quietness and stillness of the genre. In her work, she creates worlds of her own, in which objects are given a new place, meaning and relationship to one another.
She is also interested in the emotional and symbolic meaning of objects. Beyond their original function, objects can carry all kinds of things with them. By intentionally bringing objects together and playing with light, colour, form and composition, a world emerges in which the objects come together to form a story. Every painting holds a story of its own for her, but she leaves it to the viewer to decide what meaning it may hold for them.
Her style is realistic and refined, yet within this precision she searches for something that cannot be fully seen or explained. Her work moves between the temporary and the timeless, intuition and conscious choice. In a world where trends follow one another so quickly, she looks instead for what endures: value, craftsmanship and beauty.
Her paintings do not need to shout to be seen. Instead, they create a moment of stillness, inviting the viewer to slow down, look closely and make space for their own memories, associations and interpretations.
“Art helps me find
my way back to myself,
again and again.”
Teodora is a Dutch painter, born in the spring of 1992 in the former Yugoslavia, into an artistic family. Her mother is a musician and her father a painter. Later that year, when war broke out, her parents fled to the Netherlands with her as a baby, where the family rebuilt their creative life.
From an early age, Teodora felt a strong need to create worlds of her own. As a child, she would build small worlds from everything around her, giving each object its own place and meaning. Creativity was always a part of her life, but her path back to art took many years. After working as a graphic designer for ten years, the lockdown in 2020 created space for her to rediscover where her creativity could take her.
It began with a small vase that had been in her family home for years. One morning, while drinking her coffee, she noticed the vase with a freshly picked flower. She took it with her, along with a stone, and began to sketch. When the drawing was finished, she wanted to explore the image in colour as well, without really knowing how. Her father taught her the basics of painting, after which she continued to develop herself as a self-taught artist. She discovered that she could do something she had never tried before.
Around the same time, she met her partner in Italy. The encounter and the new life that followed gradually changed the direction of both her life and her work. At the end of 2022, she left her career as a graphic designer behind, and in 2023 she decided to dedicate herself fully to art. Making the transition to painting also meant learning to trust the unknown. That belief continues to play an important role in both her life and her work.
Teodora works exclusively with still life. She is naturally drawn to the quietness and stillness of the genre. In her work, she creates worlds of her own, in which objects are given a new place, meaning and relationship to one another.
She is also interested in the emotional and symbolic meaning of objects. Beyond their original function, objects can carry all kinds of things with them. By intentionally bringing objects together and playing with light, colour, form and composition, a world emerges in which the objects come together to form a story. Every painting holds a story of its own for her, but she leaves it to the viewer to decide what meaning it may hold for them.
Her style is realistic and refined, yet within this precision she searches for something that cannot be fully seen or explained. Her work moves between the temporary and the timeless, intuition and conscious choice. In a world where trends follow one another so quickly, she looks instead for what endures: value, craftsmanship and beauty.
Her paintings do not need to shout to be seen. Instead, they create a moment of stillness, inviting the viewer to slow down, look closely and make space for their own memories, associations and interpretations.
“For me, a still life is
the creation of a space
where attention can come
to rest for a moment.”
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