Terrie always considered herself a lover of making art since childhood but chose a career in pharmacy.  In 1989 she needed to do very hard recovery work from early trauma and gave herself 3 months off from work and enrolled in the Atelier Lack School in life drawing as well as doing traditional cognitive therapy, realizing she needed art for recovery.  For several years after she did portraits, including ones of herself and other family members from black and white photos to reconnect herself to her child-self . Her realization that this would help came from the book Original Blessing by Matthew Fox which had a whole chapter on Art as Meditation. 

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In 1995 more trauma recovery was necessary and Terrie figured out that the portrait painting was too intense, requiring perfection and she began to switch to a method she learned from a class she took from Marian Alstad at the Edina Art Center.  It was putting down watercolor paint and watching the colors blend, not having a plan and then seeing what the paint itself did and letting her brain see shapes and patterns that would tell her next where to go.  Similar to seeing pictures in the clouds.   This has become her favorite method of painting.  Now she allows all of her imagery to come out of her own brain.  

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A thing that Terrie loves about the abstract nature of this method is that others see things she did not see as well and tell her their imaginary images they find in her work.  Many have told her that they never thought they liked abstract art, but they like hers.  That is a bonus to what she makes!  She thinks part of the magic is that it is not a formulaic design, but fresh each time.

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Sometimes she has a plan and sometimes not but even with a plan her paintings tell her things she did not see before.  It has become play rather than striving for perfection.  In January 2017 Terrie had QEEG brain mapping done to prepare for Neurofeedback therapy for PTSD.  The outcome showed that the time that Terrie’s brain is most functional is when she is drawing and the next most functional time is during writing.

 

What Terrie wants to tell everyone is that doing what gives you peace and joy is important for all of us.  Creativity, including art, music, dance and theater is to be celebrated and nurtured! As Joseph Campbell advised “follow your bliss”.

Have some fun! 

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The work shown on this page is not for sale.