“As portraits of potential, suspended in moments of change, Allen’s depictions of illusory forms in ambiguous settings invokes a psychological realm—images that do not follow the rules of our world but perceive a reality that exists beyond its limits.” 

—Stephanie Cristello

Theodora Allen’s atmospheric oil paintings on linen depict natural phenomena and symbols chosen for their enduring presence in human history and culture. Drawing from emblematic, esoteric and personal sources, her unique visual language serves as a cipher for narratives both eternal and intimate. Her work interweaves symbols of time and devotion, such as hearts and hourglasses, with shooting stars, psychotropic plants, and armor. Distinguished for their jewel-toned blues and sensuous and austere style, the compositions explore themes of cycles and regeneration with a coded logic that nudges the realm of sacred text. 

Theodora Allen's paintings are quiet, restrained, and at times unsettling. Drawing from music, literature, myth and nature, Allen's meditative compositions investigate themes of temporality and eternity, exploring a space between the physical world and an interior mindscape. In recent bodies of work, Allen has presented images of celestial bodies, moths and serpents, delirium-inducing plants, and string-less guitars emerging from geometric structures and reliquary-like spaces. The emblems are introspective and elusive, carrying the tone of despondency and the weight of existential inquiry. Through a rigorous painting process, Allen's evocative imagery becomes ghostly. Allen paints in thin, meticulous layers of watercolor and oil on linen. Translucent coats of oil paint are applied and removed until the fabric itself shows the weather of its making. In this action, the artist's process is a mediation between defining and dissolving the picture plane. Sources of illumination, like a candle or moon, play an important role in radiating light throughout the composition. Evanescent surfaces, polluted spectrums, and radiant jewel-toned blues animate the forces of darkness and light. Allen's motifs engage with a visual language of utopian and metaphysical ideals, resonant in the work of visionary poet and painter William Blake, the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, early Symbolist painting, and the zeitgeist of 1960's California. Her emblems stand in as markers of time, symbols of persistence, the uncontrollable, and the inward-looking.