Parshall John Terry

I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, but currently live with my wife Kathy in Oxnard, California.

On October 20, 1996 I had a remarkable experience. I know the date because it's the date of the first entry in my first sketch book. I and my family visited the Getty Museum in Malibu, California on a Sunday. Something happened to me close to a religious experience. I was tremendously impressed with what I saw, especially with classical Greek/Roman sculpture. When I got home I immediately went to the local art store and bought a sketch book and some pencils. I pulled out an unused copy of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, that I had bought years before, and started doing the exercises. I was hooked.

It's more than six years later, and during that time I've taken courses from many artists in sculpting, drawing, painting, and printmaking at Ventura College, as well as private instruction in sculpting, carving, painting, Chinese brush painting, and drawing -- as much as time would allow.

My education before that was in Physics. BA from the University of Utah (1976), BS and MS from the University of Washington. This seems to some to be quite a change of focus, but I always regarded physics theory as having a great beauty - albeit an austere sort of beauty. I'll never forget the awe I experienced when I first encountered Maxwell's Equations in the Lorentz covariant notation of special relativity, how a set of four messy looking equations translate into one simple looking compact form. I think now that if I had learned how to draw as a child it could have actually helped me in my study of physics, as I would have had a a clearer faculty of observation.

Visual art on the other hand has a gushing sort of beauty that can hardly be contained. It of course has more direct contact with personal experience, and expression. Plus, the combination of physical and mental activity required in the creation of such artwork is an occupation that is difficult to match.

I have exhibited locally in Ventura County and Los Angeles County and at the 2003 Biennial in Florence Italy.

During August of 2003 my wife and I visited and photographed Beijing, China and Tokyo, Hakone, and Kyoto, Japan. We received warm welcomes in both places and I was inspired by many vestiges of a timeless classical beauty that I found there. This was what I was seeking and it will definitely find its way into my art.

In April 2004 my wife and I with the help of friends toured China along the ancient Silk Road. What a diversity of culture and geography. Here are photographs from our most recent adventure.

This online gallery is my welcome to you into the vast playground they call Art.

Please feel free to send me e-mail by clicking on the email address below. I welcome all responses. I will reply.

About My Art

You will better understand my art if you know my current predispositions:

1. I tend to prefer line and color over form. My art is primarily decorative, rarely didactic.

2. I'm not afraid to make something ugly. It's only by knowing the ugly that we can appreciate the beautiful. Often that which at first glance appears ugly turns out to be beautiful, and that which is immediately beautiful loses its appeal. Many times I'll combine both elements in one painting.

3. I am constantly experimenting and trying new methods. In my paintings that means free-form supports, traditional rectangles and tondos, fiberglass screen, thin paint, thick paint, controlled application, wild application, shiny surface, matte surface. (I find one approach is more suitable than another for a given subject.) Who knows what in the future. I get bored doing the same thing over and over.

4.Any subject is fair game. I don't limit my subject matter.

5. For me artwork has always been primarily a visual experience. In the past I tended to avoid elements in my art that would interfere with the visual - for instance language symbols. I didn't want the language message, if there were one, to override the pictorial presentation. However, as I have become more engaged in asian art, I've come to appreciate the beauty of the symbolic-verbal message as well.

6. Appreciation of artwork is all about learning and expectations. I maintain that almost any painting you can name, if it were found as some natural occurrence or some rock-art on the side of a remote canyon wall or in a cave would be hailed as a beautiful creation and would probably be declared a national monument. We don't seem to have the same expectations of our natural environment that we do of art. We throw out most of our concerns and notions of color, balance, proportion. We don't analyze about meanings, we take it all at face value. When we view nature, we view it with innocent eyes - not the jaded eyes. I believe this is the best way to approach art. View it as you would view the beauty of nature.

7. Another way to judge an artwork is to compare it with the underlying reality, this goes for realism, abstraction, non-objective, whatever. If it is less appealing to you than the reality it represents, it is not good. If it merely represents the underlying reality and is only as good as that, it is mediocre, if it is more appealing to you than the underlying reality it represents, that is great art. Buy it.

8. All the above was written pre-2003. It is now October 2003 and my artwork continues to evolve. I'm allowing even more influence into my art from Asian sources and more beauty. My wife and I visited Beijing and Japan during August 2003, and I've been busy making ink and watercolor paintings on rice paper drawing upon inspiration from those wonderful counties. Now I'm looking for a present day classic beauty. In my future art look for beautiful parks with women holding parasols, grand mountains, weeping willows, geisha and maiko, rivers and ocean.