Teresa McNeil MacLean

Santa Ynez artist Teresa McNeil MacLean paints, with colored pencils, watercolors and pastels, landscapes as remembered by the mind’s eye, often endangered or forgotten open space and wild places. She is motivated by love of natural places, especially the Sierra Nevada high country where as a young child she experienced many family backpack adventures. Her artistic goal is to honor the spirit of each landscape and share her celebration of wilderness.

Colored pencils on regular (vellum) surface Bristol board have been her medium of choice since trying them on a backpack trip 30 years ago, when she also began using a “burnishing” technique to spread pigment, allowing for both good color saturation and complete paper coverage. In the studio, she also works in watercolor.

MacLean’s work is in collections in North and South America, in Europe, and has appeared in many solo exhibits and several books on colored pencil art. She belongs to the Santa Barbara Art Association, Artists’ Guild of the Santa Ynez Valley and is a Signature member of the Colored Pencil Society of America.

The National Park Academy of the Arts “Arts for the Parks Top 100” included one of her drawings in its ’97-’98 U.S. touring exhibit. In June and July, ’96, The Ansel Adams Gallery in Yosemite presented an exhibit of MacLean’s work, “High Sierra: Drawing and Watercolors”. She has had work in several of the Colored Pencil Society of America’s annual international exhibitions. Her work currently can be seen in California in the Country Clinic in Solvang, the San Marcos Building (Arts Outreach) in Los Olivos, and by studio appointment.

Interested in interrelations of the arts, MacLean teaches classes on poetry, music and art, and performs as a singer-guitarist and songwriter. She and husband Dough live in a house they designed and built, with daughter Charlotte, who at age twelve has been on many camping trips and several family backpack trips in the Sierra Nevada.