Teel Sale was an artist, writer, and teacher, and had a career of national and international shows (drawing, painting, printmaking, and performance art). Sale was a faculty member (drawing, painting, and honors) at the University of North Texas from 1975 through 1989. During that time Teel collaborated with fellow faculty member Claudi Betti to co-author the successful textbook Drawing: A Contemporary Approach (1980). By emphasizing the emotional and spiritual significance of art, using artwork from contemporary artists in a multicultural world, Drawing: A Contemporary Approach became one of the most widely adopted texts on drawing and is now in its sixth edition.

Teel had three sons with her husband, Richard Sale, who was a faculty member in the English department at UNT. Teel returned to college after her sons were born to complete her bachelor’s degree and MFA. In 1977 a series of Teel’s work toured Guatemala at the invitation of Guatemala Ministry of Education. The work featured a series of 36 etchings and drawings dealing humorously with death.

Teel’s artwork often incorporated humor and experimentation. Teel adopted new technology into her artistic practice, using a photocopier to manipulate images, and later a scanner and printer to alter images, or combine images into collages. Her series Retroperspective featured classical architectural imagery alongside abstract shapes and designs which were collaged into final prints using iron-on transfers.

A later series of work, Matisse in Masquerade, re-imagined Matisse’s line drawings of nude women with the addition of realistic animal masks covering their faces. Teel was a prolific creator of artist’s books, which often employed humor and irony, and whose titles include Still Spiro-Ling Moose Jaw: An Agnew Album, Tale of the Armless Woman, and Stringer’s Report from the Sesquee-Sentenial.

In January 2020, Teel Sale donated her archive to UNT Special Collections. The collection includes many examples of Teel’s art including relief printing, artist’s books, altered books, and collage. Some representative samples of Teel’s art have been digitized and can be viewed in The Portal to Texas History.

During the Spring 2025 semester, the UNT College of Visual Arts and Design featured prints from the Teel Sale collection. The exhibition, “An Irrational Fancy,” explored future existences, both real and imagined. Six prints from the Retroperspective series were displayed along with one large relief print titled “The Mote Hunter.”

Teel and Richard have spent the later year’s of their life spending time with their many friends and family members, and reading, writing, and creating art at their country home in Ennis, Texas.