Terry Browder
A major theme in my paintings is REDEMPTION, which also applies to
my personal and spiritual life as well. I believe in reusing, preserving and "redeeming" old, discarded things into beautiful, new creations.
How could I have known that finding a stash of 1890s Texas land grant deed records, many years ago, would have been a catalyst for my
artwork? I paint on historic, handwritten documents and old ledger pages, glued to gallery wrapped canvas. This embeds a relic of history and gives my work texture, dimension and experience for the viewer.
This personal element of human touch through the beautiful, archaic script and the rich texture and patina of these ancient documents, provides another layer of content to my paintings.
I love history, I love the land, and I love storytelling! My paintings are a contemporary and abstract, visual narrative of the stories that hint of my rural farming heritage as well as my fascination with land patterns, mesas and ancient tree groves.
My paintings have an Abstract Expressionism influence, but I have also, through my lifetime of painting and mark making, developed a style and technique that incorporates extensive, spiral line work, as well. This spiral motif repeatedly appears in most prehistoric art cultures, in caves paintings and petroglyphs throughout the world. It loosely describes the circle of life and relates to the Fibonacci Sequence, the mathematical pattern inherent in nature and natural design. Influenced by my farm heritage of driving a tractor and plowing, I fondly call my spiral line painting process, "plowing the fields". My compositional approach is expressive and colorful, but my paintings also contain extensive detail, resulting in a complex interplay of line, color and texture.