Prior to his arrival to serve as Chairman of the Department of Art at the University of Delaware in 1974, Teis taught at East Tennessee University, East Carolina University, the University of Southwestern Louisiana, and the Arkansas Art Center. He obtained his undergraduate degree from the University of Missouri in 1947 and in the three years following attended the Taos Valley School of Art, La Esmeralda (National School of Painting, Sculpture, and Printmaking) in Mexico City, and Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo in Morelia, Mexico. In 1960 he received a master’s degree from the University of Tulsa, and in 1975 he completed his doctorate in arts education administration from New York University.
Teis began making collages in the 1950s and has commented on the spontaneity of the method as integral to his creative process. Thoroughly committed to abstraction, the artist's paintings incorporate both geometric and organic forms, and often include brightly-colored, floating dots or diamonds as focal points within the fields of mottled color.
