Strong. Passionate. Vivid. Memorable. To say that the work of Ted Garcia captures these qualities would be to simplify this artist's core gift. Ted Garcia's ability to capture on canvas the beauty and vitality of the passions of our lives is illustrated through his bold use of color, texture and an uninhibited brush that leaves you with the sense of "the moment."

Garcia's style grew out of commercial illustration mixed with a new-found joy of Russian impressionism after he had studied with the master Don Sahli, whose artistic roots can be traced back to the great master painter Sergei Bongart. Garcia has concentrated to develop the merging of the two styles to create the bold and vivid paintings for which he is known.

Garcia finds that the greater the passion, the more complex the painting and the greater the opportunity to develop an emotional crescendo. And the beautiful thing is that it is a very personal statement of who one is, once it is completed. A person may have a passion about his racehorse, but there is much more to that story. The horse may represent a lifetime of striving for one great win.

Garcia says: "Our lives are are about passion. My work is an attempt to bring the height of our passions into our daily lives and to share it with others. In each piece or collection, I'm attempting to emote passion from the gazer's stare — to bring him into the emotional journey that has crescendoed to that moment that is captured on canvas."