AWARD WINNERS
Terry was the Third Prize winner of International Artist magazine’s Challenge No. 109, Florals & Gardens.
Growing up in northern New Jersey, Sandy Terry had exposure to the arts through galleries, museums and theaters throughout the region as well as New York City. Terry first arrived in Canada as an exchange student while in college and since settled in the town of Sidney in British Columbia. She found her passion for painting midlife, and she has embraced nature as her main source of inspiration.
“Flowers often become metaphors for me influenced by music, dance and light,” says Terry. “I delight in their tenacity to spring forth into the world as they reveal their delicate beauty while in full bloom. They become soulful expressions of life and renewal itself. I am drawn to capture that moment of full bloom, the simple elegance in the turn of a leaf, subtle shifts in color and the radiance of light as it interacts with form.”
Working from photographs, Terry is able to crop in closely on her subjects allowing her to discover hidden gems that spark further inspiration. Terry uses acrylics for her artwork, but has the goal of making the pieces look like oil paintings. “I developed a scumbling technique before I knew what ‘scumbling’ was,” she explains. “The bonus is that my technique results in a soft-edged, smooth-surface finish that is well suited for delicate petals and foliage.”
Along with the blooms themselves, the inspiration behind Terry’s artwork stems from her youth as a dancer along with music and fine art. Her painting Rococo was derived from her love of art history, while Serenity is reminiscent of her dancing days where the peonies “capture a serene grace like dancers in fluid motion.” Of another painting, Aria, she says, “The rhythm of the petals carries your eye from one area to another as in the elaborate flourishes in an aria.”