As you drive the flatlands of southeast Missouri and northeast Arkansas between the levees of the Mississippi River and Crowley’s Ridge some twenty miles west you can smell the plowed earth and know it is rich. What was river bottom before the river was chained by earthen levees and swamps drained by federal dollars is home to some 25 feet of black top soil fit to grow everything from cotton and beans to writers and artists.

John Grisham grew up in this country. He sharpened his first pencil in these same black earth fields. B.B. King honed the blues in the back water towns and taverns. Sheryl Crowe was a city girl from Kennett before she became a musical icon. This place grows things.

The black soil, sharecropper shacks and bountiful harvest grew an artist. Her name is Teresa Dirks and her art has power.

“From the environment, I devise visual qualities and inspiration from the physical objects around me, whether they are from the natural world or the industrial world, and create tension within the color palette. The juxtaposition of these elements is important to my energy and power that I transfer to the canvas.” Colors and textures roll, toil and leap from her canvas.

“With me, color has power: Color evokes emotion. Color evokes a primal urge. Color evokes energy. Plugging in to that power is what I do. My meditative state presents these visual qualities when I engage and transfer the power of color: the power of the moment.”

Witness the power of the moment through the art of Teresa Dirks.