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Jeffrey Terreson
artwork
b. 1955
Jeffrey Terreson was raised in Bedford, NY, where his natural artistic talent was recognized at a young age. He earned a merit scholarship to the Columbus College of Art and Design, where he received his BFA in 1976 at the top of his class. After apprenticing with artists Robert Hendel and Mark English, Terreson found the means to support himself through illustration. During this time, his art was purchased and published by Fortune 500 companies including Mobil, IBM and NBC, as well as the United Nations and the PGA. His art has appeared in nationally published periodicals including Time, Newsweek, National Geographic and Reader’s Digest and has been commissioned by the likes of Ralph Lauren and Joseph Abboud.
After a great deal of success as an illustrator, Terreson decided to embrace his true passion and desire to express himself through paint. He absorbed the art and ideals of some of the 20th centuries most ground breaking artists such as Jasper Johns, Joan Snyder, Mark Rothko, Larry Poons, Julian Schabel and Hugh Steers.
Drawing from the legacy of abstract expressionism, Terreson’s powerful imagery reflects man’s spiritual quest and psychological struggle of existence in both the internal and external world. Embracing the aesthetic process of painting through the use of vibrant pigment and encaustic wax, Terreson achieves an uninhibited gestural style illuminating himself as a “sculptor in paint”.
Historically used by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, encaustic is a technique that involves mixing pigments into wax, which is then heated and “burned” with different instruments. "Encaustic has been around for two millennia, and artists continue to explore its possibilities. Wax can be layered, fused, chiseled, and otherwise manipulated."* The process is exciting and dramatic and has added a level of improvisation to Jeffery Terreson’s art. Pure color hues mingle with texture as the artist spontaneously molds and sculpts the surface of the canvas with his dynamic energetic gesture. Terreson’s moody surfaces explore and evoke landscape, still life and figural forms as thematic associations within a sophisticated play of color and light.
Terreson received the National Award of Excellence from The American Juried Art Salon. Additionally, he was one of the ten artists chosen in a national search by Southwest Art Magazine to feature in their own select portfolio edition. In January 2015 Jeffrey exhibited his work at the Katonah Museum of Art‘s 'Line Describing Cone’ juried by esteemed curator of the Museum of Modern Art, Eva Respini.
*Cate MqQuaid, Boston Globe Correspondent, The Boston Blobe, November 14, 2012, G3
"Ever since I can remember, design and color have been my touchstones. It is where I begin, and the guide I consult to the end. Though design is the core, recent years have seen a strong development in spontaneity being the very center of my initial connection. The creative impulse grabs me at any moment of the day. Always ready. Eyes triggered. It is a beloved curse. I could be inspired by an obscure image from nature, how the sun hits a shape, or the angle of a shadow, the isolation of nature in its environment, the natural graphic, a design in a single rock, tree, water, person, or shape. Whatever it is, it becomes alone in place, framed by its setting, where the restriction of representation disappear." -- Jeffrey Terreson
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