“It is just something that is so absolutely a part of my whole being and is a part of my consciousness and how I look at the world and how I look at people,” Cline explained. “Everything is a potential subject matter for me.”

Cline cannot ever remember a time when she was not creating or being artistic in some way.

“I have always been an artist,” she added. “It is one of those things where it started from a very young age, and it has just constantly evolved and gone into other areas.”

Cline does not have one preferred medium that she uses when painting. She describes herself as a visual artist that paints in the abstract. She had some formal training, but for the most part, she considers herself self-taught.

“Self taught meaning that when you paint daily for 25 years, you are essentially discovering new things on a regular basis just simply because you do it every single day,” she said. “The material process and the thought process of doing that every single day evolves constantly.”

While some artists plan out each and every brush stroke before placing it strategically on the canvas, Cline paints from an intuitive, unconscious state.

“I have read about other artists that have this same kind of painting method, and they have described it as an intuitive and unconscious way of approaching painting,” Cline said. “I don’t put a brush stroke here, and then step back and look at it. When I am painting, I paint in sets of time, say like 20 or 30 minutes at a time. I work fast; I work very wet; I work very loose, so my work isn’t very deliberate.”

When Cline is not painting, she is collecting. Instead of gathering unique stamps and coins from countries around the globe, she collects images of body parts in her collective consciousness.

“My figurative work is kind of an accumulation of body parts. I collect little things about people,” she said. “Some people have great chins or great noses or certain aspects about them that stand out or stick in my mind.”

Cline stores these body parts in her mind until she gets in front of a canvas and withdraws these images from what she has termed her collective visual memories.

“Those pieces all get incorporated into my work in a way that it isn’t any one particular person that I am painting, because they are all abstract,” she said. “They really represent the female form not just specifically any one person doing any specific thing, but I will incorporate some pieces along the way from the interaction with people that I pick up. Certain things about certain people stick in my mind, and so I use them in my paintings.”

As an artist visually drawn to shapes and light, Cline sometimes finds herself concentrating on the details of people rather than the words they speak to her.

“A lot of times when I am having conversations with people I get sidetracked with what they say, because I am looking at their body language and how the light hits their face, and the patterns and shapes they create,” she said.

Cline is not an art teacher, but she feels that there is always something to be learned from other artists. Her advice to young artists is to learn as much as they can about the art world and then find their own voice.

“I think the hardest thing for most young artists is that they are all over the map because they don’t have a signature style. They don’t find a satisfaction with what they are doing, because they are copying too many existing artists. I think the most important thing for young artists is to try and paint how you feel instead of trying to paint for the market,” she said. “Once you find a more serious voice and your work becomes more of an individual thing, then the marketing aspect of it is the next thing you do.”

Cline exhibits in several area galleries, including Tracery Interior in Rosemary Beach and the Beverly McNeil Gallery in Destin. She has a new exhibit coming up on Sept. 2 at Tracery Interiors where her new exhibit, “Exploration and Interpretation Figurative and Landscape Work,” will remain on display for one week and then will return to Cline’s gallery.

Cline, a resident of Santa Rosa Beach, owns Teresa Cline Gallery – a studio gallery. Visits to her gallery are available by appointment only. Her paintings range in price from $600 to $8,500. For more information about Cline or her work, check her out on the Web at http://www.TeresaClineGallery.com.