Theodora Allen’s meticulous compositions harmonize realist and graphic imagery to form an uncanny landscape—a confluence between the natural world and a metaphysical one. Her distinct visual language, rooted in emblematic, esoteric, and personal sources, are ciphers for narratives both eternal and intimate. In recent bodies of work, shooting stars, psychotropic plants, and classical armor, are woven together with distilled symbols of time and devotion; hourglasses, hearts. At once sensuous and ascetic, with lapidary-like precision and coded logic, the compositions explore themes of cycles and regeneration, nudging the realm of sacred text. Through her evanescent surfaces and a cool palate of blue and steely gray, Allen's rigorous method of painting pushes the evocative imagery further toward the ethereal: Many thin layers of oil paint are applied and removed until the fabric itself becomes weathered. In this action, an interior light source is alternately dimmed or revealed, while an on-going mediation between defining and dissolving the picture plane unfolds.

Theodora Allen (b. 1985, Los Angeles, CA) received her MFA in painting from the University of California (2014) and her BFA in painting from ArtCenter College of Design (2009). In 2011, she completed a residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Madison, ME. Recent solo exhibitions include: Soccer Club Club, Chicago, IL (2023); Blum & Poe, Los Angeles, CA (2022); 12.26, Dallas, TX (2020); Kasmin, New York, NY (2019), among others. Recent museum exhibitions include Gimlet Eye, Huset for Kunst & Design, Denmark (2022) and Saturnine, which was first exhibited at the Kunsthal Aarhus in Denmark (2021) and later traveled to the Driehaus Museum in Chicago (2022). This exhibition was accompanied by a book of the same name, which also serves as the first published monograph of Allen’s work. In 2021, Allen was an Artist in Residence at 100W Artist & Writer Residency in Corsicana, TX. Allen’s work resides in the permanent collection of the Dallas Museum of Art. Allen currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA