Artist’s Statement and Bio:
Terry Straus
Artist’s Statement:
Someone once told me, ‘Studying is different than reading. Studying is looking very deeply, searching for meaning and understanding’. Drawing is studying for me - but with no words. Drawing people doing yoga postures shows what part of the body is working.
Writing a letter to myself or everyone, is me creating a painting. When I speak I see - in my mind’s eye, images. Perhaps I’m storing them for later reference. My work reflects what I’m doing or thinking about. During covid lockdown, I created portraits based on social media. When I paint I hear - in my mind’s ear, my thoughts become words. While drawing the social media portraits, I could hear their voices in my memory. My reaction to the messages influenced aspects of the portraits: one subject’s hair glowed, as I rendered her, I sobbed reliving her personal story. Another’s office melted away under my paintbrush as I heard him describing his youthful success in a garden.
Art is communication, but without words or musical notes, paint and other mediums are words. When I work, I go other places. I like how that feels. When I was a kid someone gave me paints and a how-to book. That morning, I started my first painting. When I finished, i realized I lost a sense of time and place in front of my canvas. I enjoy seeing how materials interact, play, or fight against each other.
When you look at my work, you might get what I was thinking, or learn from my technique. Most people find their own meaning or relationship to the work. I enjoy when people tell me what they experience while looking at my compositions
Bio:
Terry was raised in New York City, there she enjoyed going to museums and attending performances. On Saturdays, she studied at a High School scholarship program at, The Cooper Union. In her 20s, Terry worked as a freelance graphic designer, then as an art director at an ad agency. She received a Masters in Art Education at Brooklyn, CUNY and taught High School Art for ten years. Terry started to exhibit at age 36. Terry remembers, “Teaching inspired my work and working inspired what I would teach, it was fun.”
Terry eventually opened a studio upstate and continued to exhibit in the Hudson Valley. Terry explains, “Being a mom changed my lifestyle and it was reflected in my work. Landscapes explored suburbia, the edgier nudes of my youth became yoga inspired. I was able to paint more, my compositions and pallet grew.”
Terry was a volunteer member on several boards. The Upper Nyack Green Committee, conducted early research, petitioned the town board, county board, went door to door, to successfully create a power aggregation committee that negotiated a greener county footprint for less cost then homeowners were paying for fossil fuel power. It is called Sustainable Rockland.
Today, Terry examines the changing world: the environment, and social media. When asked what unified her work, she answered, “whatever I am seeing, internal or external, is what my work is about. Over the last two years, I have been drawing and painting portraits, and landscapes. My media has become more complicated and inventive. I use traditional materials but combine them differently. I strive to create art compositions that bring insight and beauty to my own mind..