Theodora Zavala paints in multiple genres and diverse subjects, and therein lies a lead to what fundamentally drives her as an artist.
At recent solo exhibits on Long Island, her ocean scenes hung alongside a jeep on a parkway, and portraits of people and animals were next to a study of Poland Spring bottles. Her still lifes include everything from peonies and foxgloves in vases, orange slices on a plate, and glasses of milk, water with fruit, and coffee mixing with cream.
Asked what inspires such wide-ranging subjects, she reveals she aims to push her boundaries.
“I like to challenge myself and try to paint something different that I’ve never tried before and see if I can do it,” said Zavala, a retired educator from East Meadow on Long Island.
She finds still lifes the most challenging, particularly the glasswork she employs while channeling Janet Fish, a contemporary painter famed for her exquisite glassware. While attending Queens College, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts in fine arts in 1974, Zavala mostly had to paint models and Cézanne-like still lifes. She only returned to the genre in more recent years while teaching her second-grade students to paint striped candy mints, Tootsie Rolls, stuffed animals, pinecones and pumpkins.
Her studies of grapes and cherries in glasses of water, with the sunken fruit also reflected at the top of the glass, proved a particularly challenging optical effect.
“They look a little fuzzy and that’s the only time I’ll accept that because that’s the way they looked,” she said of the reflections. “I painted what I saw.”
And herein lies her steadfast technical standards. While in college she dabbled in some shadowy abstract paintings, she has since always strived to produce representational subjects as accurately and clearly as possible. Beyond this realism, she stylizes her work with enhanced lighting and vibrant colors, inspired by the late Wayne Thiebaud’s paintings of brightly colored cakes. Above all, she seeks to capture the essence of each subject.
“In still lifes, I look for what it is that makes these objects come to life,” she said. “In portraits, the expression of the person is important. I feel that it gives me a look into the thoughts and feelings of my model. It could be in facial expression or body language.”
“I like to challenge myself and try to paint something different that I’ve never tried before and see if I can do it.’”
Zavala’s creative process begins with observation and, as a longtime photographer, taking photos of scenes and subjects that strike her aesthetic sensibilities, typically while biking in a park or driving on a parkway. Often she takes snapshots of heavily trafficked roads, waves crashing on beaches and birds in their habitats, painting from the best images. With still lifes, she selects and composes her various objects and shines artificial light to her liking.
She started selling her work as she displayed in more solo and group exhibits at galleries, colleges and libraries in New York City and Long Island. Her portraits, still lifes and seascapes sell the most.
Jason and Althea Harewood are among Zavala’s collectors. They’ve hung her paintings of teacups in their newly renovated kitchen and of car-filled highways alongside their existing New York cityscapes. Jason also purchased three of her landscapes of a park where he walks and meditates.
“She just happened to capture some of my favorite locations in the park,” Jason said of what initially drew him to her work. “Now I have those pieces in my home, so if I can’t go out and can’t be there, at least I can mentally place myself there.”
After graduating college, Zavala drew pictures and snapped photos more than she painted, and none of her many jobs tapped her artistic talents. An exception was at McCall Patterns, where she worked from 1982 to 1995 and used Adobe Illustrator to create instructional guides for sewing.
After she returned to painting more regularly—having earned her Master’s Degree in elementary education at Hofstra University in 2002 and while teaching everything from math and art to reading and writing at Queens schools—she committed to taking classes in drawing and painting. Three mentors, pastelist Dan Slapo, portraitist Rob Silverman and landscapist Howard Rose, the latter two her teachers at the National Art League in Queens, collectively helped Zavala improve her compositions, mix paints for richer colors, and create more precise portraits.
When she grew dissatisfied painting landscapes on her own, she started in 2014 to study with Rose, who sold his beach and nature studies at a Southampton gallery for 13 years. He continues to help improve her colors for nature scenes and develop more realistic flesh tones for portraits.
“The main thing about Theodora is she loves painting, which is one of the most important things, and she really wants to learn and has plenty of patience,” said Rose, noting that Zavala typically restarts a painting in part or whole if he advises a better direction.
Mainly through her membership in multiple art leagues and organizations, she has painted many portraits, ranging from a white-bearded model posing as Walt Whitman to “Delvy,” a young modern woman sporting a nose ring. Her animal portraiture includes a husky with multi-colored eyes titled “Achilles” and a pony with sumptuous caramel-brown tones.
Rose also praises Zavala for the “clean colors” in her still lifes, and highlights her preparatory drawings as key to her creative process.
“Everything will come together if you start off with a really good design, and that’s what she does,” he added.
Already a recipient of multiple art awards, Zavala is primed for new challenges. Among them is to paint on larger canvases, from her current maximum dimensions of 18 x 24 inches to 4 feet or more. She also seeks to incorporate more birds in her paintings, especially the hummingbirds she photographs during her summer travels upstate New York. And this points to her most daunting challenge: to paint subjects and scenes straight from her imagination rather than rely on photographs.
“I would like to make paintings from my imagination of images that I have lingering in my memory that have evoked strong feelings in me,” she said. “Even though these paintings will be from my imagination, I still want to have the ‘essence,’ that bigger-than-life feeling, where my paintings seem to come to life.”
Theodora Zavala can be contacted via her website: theodorazavala.net or email: t.zavala.artist@gmail.com.