Justin Teisl is an artist living and working in Oakland, California. Born in Wisconsin, Justin received his BFA at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2007. He moved to San Francisco in 2008 and soon took a hiatus from his art practice to explore California, only to return to the studio several years later with a heightened sense of commitment and determination. In 2021 he crossed the Bay and set up a home studio in sunny Oakland.
Teisl works with a variety of materials and techniques and is always trying new things, but epoxy resin continues to be the center point of most of his processes. Most of his works push the line between two and three dimensional artwork, often extending two centimeters off of the wood on which he paints. He's fascinated by the idea that a picture can be crafted throughout and between the many layers of a three dimensional painting, and will be pushing this effect to presently unknown ends.
Teisl's subject matter routinely consists of trees and skies and sunlight, often from a 'looking up' perspective, and always rendered with degrees of abstraction. Depicting the natural world through the lens of a creative 21st century human is important, but just as important is how he chooses to render these images. He often paints the gaps in between the leaves and branches of the trees to reveal the image. Painting this negative space (what's not there) to reveal what is there (the trees) recalls the way that real life actions and inactions are related and often equal in weight.