|
Terry Samples
Back
View more works by Terry Samples
TERRY SAMPLES
ARTIST’S STATEMENT
Rippling necks, rumps, and flanks, the light-dazzled outline of a lifted hand with reins ----- such features convey an impression of the West that Terry Samples would have us not forget. A land portrayed in some of his landscapes by receding layers of basin and range, of ghost water sliding through a canyon. Relic tracts of wilderness, perhaps, but cast with a light from some other time. In his latest body of paintings, Samples comes at the West’s usual icons with the same impressionist slant. The familiar silhouette of a rider becomes exotic, almost mysterious in the light the dust kicks up. Our fantasy cowboy without a face.
Born in Ohio and raised in New Mexico, Terry Samples left home early to work as a hired hand, living on horseback, mending fences and chasing strays in the mesquite border country. Maybe it was here that he felt the image of the rider as inseparable from the landscape he rides through. His degree in Fine Arts is complimented by a lifelong appreciation of the violin (to unwind a little between paintings he might pick up his fiddle and play a few rounds of Irish jigs and reels), and a Masters degree in Archeology/Anthropology. A gifted “dirt man¨ on site, he has a knack for reading stratigraphy, the narrative displayed in layers of earth of what people and the weather did over the years.
In his studio in Flagstaff a painting evolves as he draws, using oil paint sticks, rarely brushes, preferring to apply paint from hand directly to canvas, layer upon layer.
Education:
1992 Master’s Degree, Anthropolgy/Archaeology, Northern Arizona University.
1973 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Honor Graduate, University of North Texas.
|
Click here to sign our guest book. |
|
