ABOUT

In his paintings, Benjamin Terry gravitates toward crude, but slyly well-constructed object-making and a playful exploration of the relationships between implied and real space. Shallow atmospheric spaces are punctuated by hard-edged bits of plywood shapes that seemingly float past others, only to be pulled down by the weight of gravity. Outside of the studio, he has become transfixed with the observation that some people’s happiness may bring others misery.

The gradient is one of a handful of avant-garde painting tropes that recently emerged and then quickly succumbed to the clutches of kitsch. Terry observed artists as they adopted the airbrush and spray-painted gradient, oftentimes wondering if he needed to acquire an airbrush himself. It rivaled the thick, gestural, oil-painted brush stroke as an undeniably seductive painting maneuver. However, it wasn’t until an arbitrary event in the studio led him to use a sprayer, releasing the soft-edged color transitions into his own practice. There was something in the organic occurrence of the gradient that captured Terry’s attention. His work employs the risky and exciting problem solving that painting with gradients requires. Terry has infused life back into what he thought had lost its joy and freshness.

Benjamin Terry lives and works in Dallas, TX. He received an MFA in Drawing and Painting in 2013 from the University of North Texas. He has exhibited work in numerous solo and group exhibitions across the country including Atlanta, Baltimore, Brooklyn, San Francisco, Dallas, and Houston. Terry was an artist-in-resident at The Maple Terrace in Brooklyn in the spring of 2018 and 100 West Corsicana in 2020. Curatorial work has become an integral part of his practice with exhibitions curated at Kirk Hopper Fine Arts (Dallas), Circuit12 Contemporary (Dallas), and Texas Woman’s University (Denton) in 2017. He was featured in volume 96 and 132 of New American Paintings, and has received both the Clare Hart Degoyler and the Arch and Anne Giles Kimbrough awards from the Dallas Museum of Art. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas Arlington.