Christopher T Terry

Green Square Still Life Painting, Oil on Canvas, Contemporary

2018

Christopher T. Terry was born in Stamford, Connecticut and studied Painting at Rhode Island College and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has exhibited his work throughout the United States and is currently represented by galleries in Manhattan and Charlotte, NC. He is the recipient of numerous awards as a painter including the Utah Visual Artist Fellowship, and a WESTAF/NEA Fellowship in Painting. He has twice been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship for Teaching and Research in Germany and in 2000 was a Visiting Artist at the American Academy in Rome. Terry taught at universities in the U. S. and Germany and served for ten years as Associate Dean in the Caine College of the Arts at Utah State University. He left academia in 2020 to work full-time as a painter. Christopher Terry's paintings explore the tension between the everyday and the mystical. His subjects are primarily inspired by objects and artifacts that lack a strong ego and avoid connections to popular culture. He frames and illuminates this subject in a way that interprets still life as a secular altar where an ambiguous ritual takes place. The paintings resulting from this exploration are often both serene and meditative, yet also charged with anticipation. This tension is sustained by a rhythm that evokes the rhythm of memory and dreams. Paradoxically, for an artist like Terry, often considered a "realist," this rhythm arises more from invention and memory than from direct observation.