Terry’s Story

With the 2020 coronavirus pandemic forcing her classes to temporarily close, Terry moved her classes online to reach a wider audience and allow children, adults and families to refine their portrait skills. She wanted to provide a creative outlet during isolation and connect with her current students who look forward to her classes each week.

The reception to her online series has been one of success, with parents and children alike sitting down together to draw. Children and grandparents shared the experience via Zoom and Skype, as they followed the instructional videos and drew together.

Now as we return to a degree of normality, Terry is very excited to be back in her large studio teaching face to face classes once more. Hygiene is a top priority and the classes are limited to 10 students for social distancing.

Inspired by Harry Potter with a sense of mystery and fun in each of the 12 videos, they evoke anticipation and excitement. The split-screen production is a vital component, allowing participants to watch how Terry works from a life model, the thought and technical process involved to perfect each element, and shares an abundance of professional experience, knowledge and creative encouragement. Each one of these 12 videos are clear and instructional, teaching you how to draw simply by looking and following the demonstrations on the easel shown on one half of the screen. Terry’s infectious and entertaining personality will get you thinking, creating and learning about the human face.

In conjunction with Artscool lessons, Terry is an internationally recognised artist. Her paintings focus on the human skull, interwoven with political, religious and historical references. Her work can be found across Europe in major collections and in Australia, Mona and Melbourne’s White Night festivals were significant with the crowd numbers soaring to over twenty thousand.

At age seven, Terry declared to ‘the world’ that she wanted to be an artist. As a child, she was excited to find hidden treasures in the earth, exploring with her hands in the garden. The painting technique she developed became linked, like digging into the ground with the painted layers being stripped away to reveal molten like sediments of colour encased in blackness. And like bubbles rising from the deep, intricate threads of fraying lace and fabric patterns form a network of skeletal eyelets, recalling the bridal dressmaking tradition of her ancestors.

A NOTE FROM TERRY

“Fine art is a visual language that takes time but it is widely known that it develops the learning capacity in the brain to achieve higher results in education particularly art, language, science, maths and music. Forty years of being a professional artist and teaching children and adults for 30 years has enabled me to give to these videos a quirk of instructions like no other.

Art provides a psychological balance as its base is strongly connected to how we interact with our immediate surroundings, our relationships with people and our natural environment. And creativity is good for our health, encouraging focus on the here and now. Being productive affects the brain and the body in a good way and it is very essential that children learn at a very early age to be positive and productive. Around the age of 5 years old they can be taught the foundation blocks of art which once established give children a visual eye so that advanced learning can take place earlier which increases greater skill and talent.

The value of visual art is often overlooked particularly within primary education and it has been a great concern of mine for a long time. When I was young the opportunities for learning how to paint and draw were not available and my Dad knew how it was important to me so we would draw together. I learnt so much through his instructions and have such good memories of our time spent. So when I see children now who have a similar artistic spirit and love for art it makes me feel thankful and happy that they are able to be tutored and guided by me but also I feel frustrated by the lack of quality teaching and the apparent disinterest to improve art education in primary schools. The grade that I teach at is equal to secondary and early university levels but I break down many complex instructions and techniques for the benefit of the young to learn. The results are of a very high standard with many students being awarded in their individual schools for excellent achievement and many receive scholarships in later secondary years.