Archie Boyd Teater - Artworks

Artworks

Teater was an enormously prolific painter. A canvas a day was standard, and often he would do two or more. Patricia Teater once remarked that her husband had done 10,000 paintings, but this seems implausibly large. Teater himself said when he was in his early '70s that in two years he would have painted more than any artist in history. Whatever, his output was prodigious, and it is safe to say that his lifetime output of paintings is well in excess of 4000. His subject matter was broad as well, and included portraits, still lifes, nudes, animals, landscapes, coasts and seashores, cowboy and mining towns, city street scenes, barrooms and dance halls, mining and logging camps, range life, humor, fantasy and autobiography, natural, social and military history, and social commentary.

For the most part, Teater was a plein air artist, and the bulk of his painting was done on the scene in open air. He painted outdoors in every kind of weather, including rain, snow, sleet, and sub-zero temperatures. Teater painted entirely in oil, usually on canvas, but occasionally on wood or canvas board. In his youth, he did a lot of wood carving and some sculpting, and at least one early painting exists that was carved in relief before being painted. However, in his mature years, his medium appears to have been exclusively oil. He may have written a few poems, and in addition left an unpublished novel that is an allegory of a couple of years of family life when he was a teenager living along the Snake River.

Teater’s painting style has been described by one commentator (John Walker) as "Post-Impressionistic Romantic" and by another as "The Burl Ives of Canvas". However, it is probably best simply to say that his style was unique. There was nothing whatever academic about him. He painted from his experience, and painted what he saw. No artist has ever painted mountains, especially the Grand Tetons, with his particular grace and touch. Anyone who knows his art can tell his paintings of the Tetons at a glance. And the same is true of his cowboy and mining towns and his peopled street scenes. His scenes can be joyful and humorous, or they can be forlorn and mournful. His people and animals in compositions are often impressionistic swatches, yet his formal portraits are done with the care and skill of a near master. He had great balance and sense of color. Until his early 20s, he was totally self-taught. While it is clear that he was influenced by some of his teachers, and at times his oils were strongly impressionist, basically his style was that of an extremely talented primitive.