"Dara Theodora’s process is instinctual. She uses spontaneous techniques like sancai-inspired dripping, yielding to the natural fall of paint instead of controlling it. She layers her limited palette into soft textures, often in a spiraled composition. Then, her heightened sense of pareidolia uncovers figures and shapes within. Dara accepts uneasy echoes of movement in the form of third limbs or other abstractions and creates strange dreamscapes that grapple with the transient nature of life and the stories humans keep repeating."
Dara Theodora
Born in Central Texas / Works in Portland, Oregon
Dara Theodora is a contemporary Surrealist artist. Working primarily in hand-mixed egg tempera and oil paints, she creates layered, symbolic works exploring identity, mythology, folklore, alienation, and hope. Through dreamy landscapes, hidden figures, and unconventional perspectives, her art explores the strange and often paradoxical ways we all experience the world.
Dara Theodora is an emerging contemporary Surrealist artist based in Portland, Oregon. Working primarily with hand-mixed egg tempera and oil paints, she creates layered, often paradoxical compositions anchored by mystical and personal symbolism.
Her process combines circular palimpsest layering, dripping techniques, and the discovery of figures within textured grounds. Rather than committing to a single style or subject, Dara moves between visual languages, juxtaposing images and figures in Southwestern Gothic settings and dreamy landscapes. Her work reflects on the fragmented nature of contemporary global life alongside the complexities of her own identity, exploring anxieties, guilt, inequality, and isolation while leaving room for hope.
Mythology, folklore, hidden figures, hauntings, and strange creatures recur throughout her work. She experiments with parallax, multiple or nonsensical perspectives, and temporal distortions to challenge familiar ways of seeing. For Dara, perception is never entirely straightforward, and the unexpected is an essential part of making art. She embraces abnormalities and mistakes as a loving part of the creative process, allowing each shape, color, and line to find its place.
Currently, she is exploring the tension between leisure and crisis, alongside personal symbolic worldbuilding.
Originally from San Antonio and Austin, Texas, Dara is now based in Portland, Oregon. Her experiences living in and drawing inspiration from the UK, Ireland, and Vermont also inform her creative perspective. She holds an MA in English Literature and Culture from the University of Birmingham and a double-major BA in English and History from Texas State University.
Exhibition history
Dara's recent exhibition and project history includes:
- 2026 — Wicked, Splendorporium, Portland, Oregon.
- 2025 — The Human Instinct, T.W. Wood Museum, Vermont.
- 2025 — Birds and Myth, The Vermont Bird Museum.
- 2025 — The Current Members Show, The Current, Stowe, Vermont.
- 2025 — Garden of Curiosities, Art Hop, Burlington, Vermont.
Her current and upcoming exhibition listings include Wild Kingdom at Anthology Gallery X, this is a show about grief at Ghost Gallery in Seattle, Tarot at Splendorporium in Portland, Skeletons out of the Closet at Alberta Street Gallery, and B/W: A Black & White Group Show at Ford Gallery PDX.
You'll like Dara Theodora if...
If you finding faces and shapes in clouds, shadows, and the cracks in old walls, and have a sneaking suspicion they might watch you back.
