Art Chowder September | October, Issue 17 | Page 12

C

olor is big for Terry. “My
work is very bright.” He acknowl-
edges it’s not for everyone; it took a
moment for the Safari Club, for ex-
ample, to acclimate. “They are very
traditional,” Terry says. “They want
to see every hair. And so when I
showed up with all this color …
I stood out bigtime.” Apparently
Carlson didn’t really take to it ei-
ther, and would often say, “Get that
orange off of your palette!”

But, “I have so much fun with
color. It’s like the first stroke of
color on a white canvas” — he
makes an explosive sound — “it’s
just exciting!” He shows me some
impressionistic cityscapes in the
corner of his studio. “You know
Steve Shortridge? He’s a really
loose and exciting painter. I like
Steve. I like his spontaneous ap-
proach; he’s real vigorous when he
paints, real energetic. I’m not like
that, but I’m also very fast; I dive
into the painting and really move it.
Because I think there’s an energy in
the spontaneous, and almost speed
of the painting — you make rapid
decisions and you have more fun.
It’s hard for me to sit down and do
any kind of detail.”
Terry likes to see brushstrokes.
It gives his paintings a certain
coyness, movement, and feeling.
He says what you leave out is more
important than what you put in. In
his bio on terryleeart.com, he uses
the word “battle” to describe what
he wants his work to do to human
indifference. “I called some of my
clients and said, ‘What is it about
my painting you like?’ They’d
always say the color, but the one
thing that kind of came out was, ‘It
brings me joy.’
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ART CHOWDER MAGAZINE