Bio

Love gets under our skin, it’s where we come together. And there’s something about that place where the land and water come together that gets under our skin. There’s a longing to be there. Most cities have sprung up where land and water meet. That’s the stage and we’re out there on it.

Ever notice that everyone Rembrandt painted had his mouth? Like it or not, most art becomes a self-portrait: In the background of my formative years was the Canadian forest in southern Ontario. We lived there, and that forest got under my skin. It was in my first painting when I was four. I wasn’t allowed to paint at home, too messy, so, I painted it elsewhere. Someone threw it out by days end, but I still remember that roaring fire in my ear as I painted.
I was smitten. 

Then there’s water, a lifelong love. I first owned waterfront property in my twenties. The rhythms of water have a hold on me, can’t look away. I think I would have lost something if I had formally studied art. 

For some odd reason, I seem to already know how to do the things I do best. That comes with an insatiable appetite.

There have been several eras in my work, so far. Each one rolled into the next. Before I began painting, I was an illustrator and art director for a dozen years. That was a good preparation, and a point of departure, but the transition wasn’t smooth. Illustration and art direction are about unreasonable deadlines and clients. Painting is demandingly personal and it’s done when I say it’s done. This is a different planet.

Suddenly, after many years of painting, circumstances flung me into making a feature film. It felt like home. After seeing a few work-in-progress scenes a number of people said it changed the way they see things. The former Chairman of the Toronto International Film Festival said, “This is not an art film, this is film as art. Terry Black is creating a whole new genre.”

A few years into the film project I resumed painting. Everything had changed when I wasn’t looking. The conductor, Wayne Jeffrey said, “Black’s earlier paintings are songs, the current paintings are symphonies.” They have grown into The Indigo Cadre collection.

All of this is part of an open creative arc. It’s a long walk from the creative part of the brain to the frontal cortex. Figuring it out and explaining it might puncture something and drain
the magic. 

That’s the background and the foreground, I’m in the middle. So, there’s my changing portrait. It’s never static; the film grows, the paint flows, they’re two parts of The Beggars Banquet Project.   Stay hungry. 

As for the customary bio details, my work exposes far more skin than they would dare.